#Macron asked us to fuck but we will not anymore

[jason-todd-is-a-real-mood]

It is now an official political act of protest for French people to not to fuck.

[asterrrrion]

Okay I should definitely be sleeping rn but ! I need to say this : I've seen a lot of international (mainly American people) on the internet describing the general situation of the world as chaotic etc because of Syria and Korea and Brian fucking Thompson and France (which is what I'm going to talk about here).

First off, the current french situation isn't really that groundbreaking or anything new right now, the country has been in a political crisis for... a while now, at the very least since 2018-19 although in my opinion it started much earlier.

It has been really chaotic for now nearly five months, since Macron dissolved the Parliament and the acting government in June after the European elections (there was a political strategy at play here however it failed pathetically which is something I'll get to later) ; however this isn't something on the scale of what happened in Korea, not even mentioning Syria. The government and the people are just (much like in America) extremely polarised because of years of neoliberal political decisions and it's showing and slowing the government down.

Tale as old as time, I know.

However ! I ask of you to never say that the extreme left and the extreme right united among themselves to take the centrist government down. While the Rassemblement National is a far right party (who is currently being charged for stealing a shitload of cash btw, hope you like the taste of lawsuits Marine), our current President Emmanuel Macron and his party (I would give you the name but tbh they've rebranded so many times I can't remember what it is rn so let's just use the old one En Marche) are NOT a centrist party, and LFI, even more so the NFP are NOT a far left coalition/party.

Saying they were a centrist party was what carried them through the 2017 presidential election until it became abundantly clear if it wasn't already that they were in fact very right-wing.

Macron started out in the Socialist Party who is, these days, not very socialist anymore and who we can in fact barely call left-wing as they tend to have pretty much the same ideals as you guys' democrats (which are our centrists, basically, we have different political scales).

So, to summarise (I am warning you right now I have unmedicated adhd and am studying history with a deep love for political history this will be 5000 words long) nearly fifteen years of french politics to analyse what got us into this mess and why I'm asking you to not say these parties are far left parties, here's this :

There are a lot of different political parties in France. Anyone can create one, and so that means that the left's biggest problem for the past *checks notes* now a bit more than a century, has been division.

The socialist party and the communist party, which used to make up most of the left wing, separated in 1921 or 22 can't remember over the 3rd International and the Soviet Union. That created the historical division between far left and left : which one wanted to overthrow the government (in the 1920s the anarchists and communists which... to the left is still the same today actually) and which one thought elections were the best way to change things (the socialists).

The communists were big for a long time but they kinda got demonized after the Marshall Plan for obvious reasons, and after the fall of the Soviet Union, while they remained the French Communist Party (PCF for short) they kinda stopped actively having communist ideals and being a big party. Nowadays they still exist but are a pretty small party and aren't exactly big revolutionaries (nor, to be honest, big communists).

The socialists had their time of glory, the Front Populaire, in 1936. It was an alliance between all left-wing parties to forbid the far right from being elected basically, as they had just attempted a basically coup d'état but not really a few months earlier. The thirties were, for also obvious reasons, a pretty rocky time in Europe. They did very very good (i'm a leftist if you haven't noticed by now. Also, duh, this is Tumblr.) social policies for the first year but quickly had to stop due to various economical and military issues and resorted to a pretty default not doing much type of governing (I promise you, this WILL become the signature pattern of the PS or socialist party).

They were elected again in the 80s, and pretty much did the same thing, and then again in 2012, and by then they were hardly a left wing party anymore, mostly a bunch of at best left centrists politicians and at worst right wing opportunists. So a new party emerged called La France Insoumise (LFI) who is now the biggest french left wing party led by an extremely controversial figure who has a bit of an ego problem (they've also, objectively, made a bunch of shitty decisions on handling inner politics of the party but we won't get into that).

Forgot to mention this but there's also the Greens, Les Verts, an ecologist party with vaguely leftist ideologies. Their ecology program is pretty much the same as LFI's but it doesn't really hurt to vote for them except for the presidential election.

Now, the Republicans on the other hand (our Republicans. not yours. obviously.) used to be a left-centrist wing party but they slowly became a right wing one at the beginning of the 20th/end of the 19th century as the monarchists and imperialists got the fuck out of the Parliament and the socialists came in. This is a prime example of a political scale being tipped to one side (rarely seen this way around). What you need to know is that except for Mitterrand in the 80s and Hollande in 2012, the country has been exclusively led by these guys from 1959 onwards. Or, not necessarily these guys but similar parties (yes I'm looking at you De Gaulle). Nowadays they're extremely divided and the whole party is falling apart between far right and traditional conservative right.

The Rassemblement National which used to be called the Front National (so RN or anciently FN) is a far right party who was founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen and a few nazis. Yes, you did read that right. No, I'm not joking. Funnily enough Jean-Marie was in the Resistance, but I don't wanna know what goes on in that guy's mind. They're now led by his daughter (as the dude is on death's door now, but there has been some family drama there also), Marine Le Pen, who has worked very hard in the past few years to make the party go from outwardly racist, misogynistic and homophobic to covertly racist, misogynistic and homophobic.

This means that aaaall of the decisions that caused poverty and misery for french citizens, mainly the lack of funding that goes into public service and the abandonment of any and all rural areas has led a lot of people to turn to the now not as demonized as before RN.

On the other side the left wing has been eating itself alive since Hollande in 2012 because of rivalries between the Socialist Party and LFI, which has cost them several times the presidential election, and less and less people are voting since more and more people are losing hope in modern politics.

Which leads us to 2017 : the election of Emmanuel Macron as President. Macron was originally a banker and Minister of the Economy under Hollande, but he changed sides and left the Socialist Party in 2016 to create En Marche, a party that was supposed to be a centrist party but was quite obviously a right wing one.

As the left was divided, LFI's leader and the socialist leader were outvoted in favour of him and Marine Le Pen for a second vote to determine the President ; this was his strategy. As long as the left was divided, he would win the first round of voting, then the second, because he knew that left-wing people would ALWAYS vote for him against Le Pen.

A LOT of shit happened under his mandate (to name a few, COVID, the gilets jaunes etc) all of which were handled very badly, and all of his decisions were neoliberal shit as always which didn't help anything and made it actively worse. That wasn't helped by the guy's ego (I am not kidding most politicians are arrogant but this is like on another level this dude seriously, dead-ass thinks he's the smartest person in any room he walks in) and general condescending behaviour and statements (like when he said "I like train stations, because you meet both people who have succeeded and people who are nothing". yeah. turns out the nation he's supposed to be representing wasn't a big fan of that one. wonder why).

In 2022 most people hated his guts, but as the left was still divided because the fucking socialists can't admit they're not the biggest leftist party anymore and the threat of the far right in power was more present than ever, he got re-elected. The thing is, right afterwards the presidential elections is held the legislatives. They're the election of both the Senate and the National Assembly, so the Whole Parliament.

Normally, this would just be a formality, as a people who has elected a president literally four weeks ago is generally going to vote for his party. It's important to note here, than TRADITIONALLY (can you hear the anger in my voice yet ?) the President, when choosing a Prime Minister, is supposed to choose from the biggest political party represented in the National Assembly. When that party is from another party than the President's, we call this a cohabitation.

Cohabitations are always a messy but pretty fun time, as the Prime Minister, usually only a lackey of the President, is now a member from an opposing party and as he has, constitutionally, enormous legal power (that he, usually, as a lackey of the President, only uses to support the President's politics). The thing is we hadn't had a cohabitation in a long-ass time, because the amount of time presidents were elected was specifically changed to avoid them and put the legislatives right afterwards the presidential election. The other thing is, when the entire country is only voting for you because the only other alternative is the far right...

Now, in 2022, the biggest party elected was still the President's. However, it was only a relative majority instead of an absolute one, which meant that they had to have support should they want to pass any law. So, instead of finding allies, they chose to use a lovely article of the Constitution, the now infamous in France 49.3. This article means that on budget laws (and ONLY on budget laws which... is definitely going to be totally respected and not at all ambiguously used) the government (read : the Prime Minister) can make a text of law bypass the National Assembly and be automatically applied.

But the Assembly has then the choice to vote in order to demote the Parliament. They tried. It nearly went through. It didn't though, in the end, because the Republicans were too divided for it to go through. However both of the major opposing forces, the entire left wing and the far right party the RN, voted it if I remember correctly. And most of the past two years until summer 2024 were just the government fighting with the National Assembly. They used a metric ton of 49.3, it's now a meme (and also a widely antidemocratic tactic that everyone hates).

In the summer of 2024, there were the European elections. Each country votes, and ours voted for the far right. Like, a lot. I'm not kidding when I say that the situation with the RN is pretty fucking critical. What matters here is also that the President's Party had a ridiculously low score.

Now, Macron won't be re-elected. He can't. Like, physically. You can't be elected more than twice in France. But he wants someone of his party to take over after he leaves (which btw is going to be difficult, I'll be very surprised if en marche lasts three weeks without him since they're also divided as hell), so he needs it to be popular.

So he did something that he thought was smart : he dissolved the government and the Parliament. That meant we had to have a new legislative election. We were scared shirtless as we were all sure the RN would be elected and we'd have an RN prime minister, which we know now by some sources is what Macron intended to be able to prove that his party is the best alternative to the far right in order to continue to be elected in the next Presidential elections in 2027.

But the morning after the annunciation, then LFI MP Ruffin called for an union of the left wing parties, which was by the way done remarkably quickly for parties that have been at each others throats for the past ten years (forgot to mention this but it HAD to be done quickly as our rat bastard President put the election literally a month and a half after annunciation).

So now Macron needed something to discredit the left in order to be considered the only candidate against the RN. And he found his thing : he demonized them. Because of their public support for Palestine, they were suddenly antisemitic (this is particularly vicious as antisemitic hate crimes have in fact been an issue since the beginning of the Palestinian genocide in France and a lot of Jewish people here are scared of antisemitism for, yk, very good reasons) and a far left party who was basically anti republican and composed of revolutionaries.

And it worked ! It helped that LFI has been seen as such for a while for a variety of reasons, mostly baseless, and that everyone conveniently forgot that the leftist union was and is made up of four different parties. The far left does not exist in the National Assembly in France. Not in the communist party, not in LFI. I'm not the one saying this, official statements by the state council are. But every right wing politician forgets that because it gets them elected. And people believe them. So stop spreading that lie, please.

The first round of voting was led by the far right, so for the second, Macron and the left allied themselves : in every district of voting where a leftist candidate, a macronist candidate and a far right candidate were still competing against each other, the candidate of the two with the least votes would resign their candidature to be able to give as little votes to the far right as possible.

In truth this wasn't completely followed by Macronists especially, some refusing to resign when against an lfi candidate, which is completely ridiculous and personally disgusts me. But it worked, and the left-wing won the election with the far right coming in third place. I cried that day, actually, from relief, as embarrassing as it is.

So that meant that Macron had to name, TRADITIONALLY, a left wing prime minister. Several names were offered (which was difficult as the socialists and government would veto any lfi member and the communists and LFI would veto any socialist member) and Macron said that he wouldn't name any government who had members from lfi in it. So the lfi leader did a pretty beautiful move and pulled out all of the lfi members of any and all propositions of government (this being, I remind, the biggest left wing party in France).

Macron still named a right-wing prime minister, denying the elections' result and preferring to work with the far right than with the left, left which might I recall got him elected. Anyway. So we got a very right wing government, borderline far right to appease the RN, who only managed to stay in place because of that fact.

They had to make 49.3 for most laws they wanted to pass as the Assembly was heavily divided in the past months. The leftist union voted to demote the government every time, but the RN wouldn't. And then, a week or two ago, on one of the most restrictive budget propositions for public service this country has ever seen, they remembered they had to look like they care about poor people since that's, you know, their electorate, and since the budget was of course forced through with 49.3 voted also to demote the government.

So now we have a new prime minister, supposedly more to the left although still, obviously, a right-winger. Nothing much changed. Can't fucking wait for 2027... And please don't say that the leftist union is far left or that Macron is a centrist. Neither are true.

[sissa-arrows]

I've completely given up on Morocco rn tbh, that country is dead to me now, like i was shocked beyond belief but it was a needed reality check.

Macron goes to visit Morocco, right? Okay, who cares, not our business , it's like he said they had always been thick as thieves and nothing can ever come between them, we already knew that; imperialist colonizers stick together. But apparently they want to make it Algeria's business bessif lol, both the French&Moroccan media and lobbies relating everything to us. Moroccans seem very proud of the visit of the ex colonizer that we are pratically ghosting at this point (after we cut any kind of link with their country mind you)

It's ridiculous when you finally see the content of the visit, Macaroni declared -under parlement applause- that Israel has the right to defend itself against Hamas's terrorist attacks since the 7th of October (Morocco has the center of the Quds committee), that Morocco spared itself from the Indochina and Algerian war, he even called it WS not MC and just said they should stick to UN decisions (the US having not long after lobbied against WS just when a huge file dropped in their favor at the international court)

The whole joke of a colonizer legitimating other colonizations aside, the hypocrisy of the media is shocking, the same people who were lynching Algeria for receiving Macron much more coldly, are now happily sharing cute clips of Macron eating Tagine or walking among ppl or receiving gifts. They attack Tebboune for going to Egypt when you know what he said there, while ignoring what that french bitch said? Yes, proves again how nuts they sound and the Hamas bit proves why those relations need to stay cut, i think we need to do more actually as a community. What is happening is very concerning, i'm mortified, i think now more than ever Morocco needs to be boycotted, we need to ignore Moroccans like pest and not engage anymore as a people because it is giving them the effect they want.

(and yes i'm not talking only about the governement, the people are completely indocrinated, if you engage they'll try to convince you the opposite and it'll just be a waste of time.)

Anyways, sorry for rumbling, Free Palestine, Free WS.

When I saw that Morocco accepted Bernard Henri Levy’s presence I realized that this country is beyond saving.

When a diplomatic visit like this one happens it is customary to give a list of the people who will come. It means that Macron asked if he could bring Bernard Henri Levy and Morocco said yes.

For the record BHL said that the hijab was “actually an invitation to rape women” because it’s hard for European men to consider a hijabi as human so it’s harder to respect her and to not rape her. He also showed support publicly to actual pedophiles and rapists. He insisted on how right now is the worst timing for France to recognize Palestine and how he was happy that the vote failed. He constantly supports “Israel” in its genocide against Palestinians. Last week before going to Morocco he was tweeting about how all the horrors happening in Gaza are actually staged and fake. In October he was also supporting the ground invasion on Lebanon saying “Israel is freeing Lebanese people”

Macron wanted to bring this man with him and Morocco happily accepted like the lapdogs and colonizers they are.

And Algeria wasn’t giving a flying fuck about it all we were not even involved but the medias in France and the Moroccans online feel the need to bring us into it because we live rent free in their heads. Like French medias saying that Morocco is “more welcoming with us French people than Algeria is” and that “Morocco is more open to conversation thanks to their normalization” and the Moroccans online who are celebrating and bragging?! Sweety being praised by the colonizers is nothing to be proud of.

Western Sahara will be free just like Palestine will be free and these normalizers and colonizers will pay for their behavior in front of Allah.

P.S: As usual if you wanna talk to be about fitna you will have to provide me with links to your posts where you call out Moroccan fitna when they normalized and then let “Israelis” officials threaten Algeria from Morocco. Or your posts calling out the fitna when they call us Algerians “children of rape” or when they insults our shouhada. Or your posts calling out the fitna when they use “Israelis” drones to bomb the Sahrawi people. Or your posts calling out the fitna when they rape Sahrawi women. I’m nice so you have loads to chose from but if you don’t have a post calling these things fitna but come to my post to accuse me of fitna you’re a hypocrite and a piece of shit.

[whitehotharlots]

Anything changed yet?

The "2020 UGGGHH" discourse is insufferable. It boggles my mind that so many people think an arbitrary temporal distinction is the cause of our nation's collapse. They believe, in all earnestness, that 2021 is going to be better simply by virtue of it being different.

There's a very good chance--better than 50/50--that 2020 is going to be the best of our remaining years, that every year and month and day from now until the sun explodes is going to be progressively worse than the one that preceded it.  

I had a sad, drunk epiphany last night about neoliberal management strategies during our collapse. The general consensus is that people like Mitch McConnell and Larry Summers are evil and stupid. But what if they're actually evil and competent? They know that mass displacement is coming, probably very soon, and they intentionally want to immiserate most people beforehand so that we won't have the resources or will to mount any consequential protest as the cities start to flood and burn and trains start herding us into camps.

You might have heard of The Great Reset. Like all other reflections of our horrific future, the political media recently began referring to it as a "conspiracy theory." Indeed, it has been badly misunderstood by paranoid right wingers. But it's real. There was a Davos conference that was literally called "The Great Reset." Transcripts and videos of conference proceedings can be found with a 10 second Google search. These people put their ideology out in the open for everyone to digest, and now simply re-posting the things they said on record makes you a conspiracy theorist.

These types of Rich People Gatherings--Davos, the Aspen Ideas Festival, etc--should not be regarded as a meeting of soothsayers. They're not even really prognosticators. They are, instead, the collected mewlings of the modern clarisy. Their declarations are meant to placate the hyper elite, convince them that their destructive behaviors are moral and the current system is totally sustainable even though the ground is clearly caving in beneath their feet. 

You can think of the visions set forth at these conferences as sort of what the rich think the best case scenario might be.

The Great Reset's best case scenario is terrifying indeed: one of the very first slides announces that by 2030 upwards of a billion people will be displaced by climate change. We won't eat meat anymore (okay, fine, whatever). Oh, also, our economy will be entirely rentier-based. You don't have any possessions. You rent everything you use. You don't draw a steady paycheck. Everyone is a gig worker. There is no retirement, either; you work until you can't, and then you die. 

This is the world both of our wretched political parties want to build. To the people who control our fate, this is idealism.

The weirdest omission is that they all seem to think that the masses are just going to go along with it. India and Pakistan will not exchange nuclear weapons: each side will merely accept that their countries are no longer inhabitable and instead of fighting for water or territory they will simply sit tight and wait for immolation. Eritreans will humbly march themselves into the sea. American homeowners will simply shrug their shoulders and consent to signing all of their earthly possessions over to Citibank in exchange for a weekly allowance of 4 cans of Spam.

Is this naivety, or do they know something we don't? Are they stupid enough to simply believe that no one will fight back, or are they planning some type of mechanisms for the suppression of unrest?

Maybe neither? Because, honestly, I can't see any reform taking place no matter how bad things get. Next year--after Biden eliminates all remaining vestiges of the social safety net and unemployment hits levels never before seen since the dawn of industrialization and the police continue to murder people at will--we could very well see riots that are ten times as destructive as the ones that hit over the past summer.

So what? What will change? The government will act swiftly to ensure that the hyper rich don't suffer a moment of inconvenience. They will give everyone else the choice of either dying quietly or getting mowed down by cops.

Remember the French Yellow Vest riots? Those were morally clear cut: their shitbag neoliberal weasel president eliminated the wealth tax--because omg can you imagine the injustice of a Kardashian only inheriting 80% of their father's money? To pay for this, France instituted a regressive gas tax and incredibly cruel pension cuts. This generated two straight years of violent, disruptive rioting. Macron's approval rating cratered toward near the single-digits. 

What was the result? The wealth tax was not reinstated. The gas tax was not rescinded. The government made a minor concession on the pension reforms, cutting payments on average by 40%, instead of the 50% that was initially approved. 

This is the efficacy of protest. This is the best us non-elites can to do change the future everyone in charge has very explicitly said they want. 

The Democrat adoration for Biden sends a clear message: you get nothing. You will never get anything. You are a bad person for even asking for something.

I’ve mentioned this before, but Endless war, deadly austerity, and environmental destruction simply do not enter the liberal worldview. Anyone who tries bringing them up is a racist sexist bro who cares more about "preventing the oceans from catching fire" when he should be paying attention to something really important, like the newest trans Marvel hero. L-look at this Beefaroni commercial that features a biracial family... you gonna look at that and tell me we're not making progress? You ingrate. You fucking worm. How fucking dare you be upset that we just stole your pension? Your soul is so blighted by privilege you think you just deserve to not go bankrupt to pay for cancer treatment? 

That's the thrust of liberalism post-Obama. No solutions, just excuses. We're not going to help anybody. But we will give relatively well off people a means of justifying, in their tiny brains, why it's good when the leaders they adore act like cruel shitheads.

[poulpichou]

Government failures and fucked-upperies in France

Ok, so I recently wrote a bit about the situation with police brutality in France, but now I would like to tell you more about WHY the government needs the police so much. A lot of my sources will be in french (and marked (F) like this) because there are a lot of cases that didn’t make it to the international press. Many sources also come from the newspaper Mediapart and require a subscription.

I’ve had a lot of people telling me “BuT It’S nOt ChInA” and let me tell you, yes I know it’s way worse in other countries (Peru, Thailand, Nigeria and so on, a lot is happening right now in the world), but where the fuck do you draw the line? The kind of things I’m gonna tell you about is unacceptable, and so hypocritical when a country calls itself a democracy and the land of human rights, and we should be angry about that and try to make it change. Here I’m talking a lot about Macron but let’s not forget that many current problems began under Holland’s presidency, who was supposed to be from the left, and even before. Alright, here we go.

President of the wealthy

Soooo let’s begin with how Macron was elected by wealthy people: half of the 16 million euro collected for his campaign was financed(F) by 1200 people, mostly living in Paris, by banks, and also by rich french people living abroad. So of course the first thing he did when he could was to reward them for his victory and he cut their taxes in december 2018. He deleted the “taxe on fortune” that was in place for 40 years (minus 3 years under Chirac first presidency) and replaced it with another that taxes way less, in the name of trickle down economy (you know, the same way Thatcher and Reagan did) saying that rich people would invest more and thus creating more jobs. Of course that didn’t happen and rich people just got way richer without any effects on poor people.

At the same time, he cut down housing benefits for students and poor people (1/4 of people between 18 and 24 are under the poverty line) and cancelled housing helps for 50,000 people. In december 2018, he wanted to pass a law that would increase fuel prices in the name of ecology, but that would once again mainly affect working and middle classes. That’s how started the yellow vest movement, because people were becomming poorer and poorer and they felt like the government only gave to the rich and took from the poor.

In 2018, 14% of the french population was under the poverty line, and 21% suffer from food insecurity and it has only worsened since.

At the end of 2019, a student even set himself on fire at his university because he was in such financial distress he couldn’t go on anymore.

Yellow Vest movement

If you have to read one article about it, it’s this one.

In 2017, Macron said in one of his speeches about a train station that it was “a place where one encounters people who are succeeding and people who are nothing”. The yellow vest movement came from these “people who are nothing”. For the first time in decades, people who were not heard, people who didn’t have a place in the political landscape in France were on the front scene. A lot of protestors never demonstrated before, or even engaged in politics. Many of them now protested because “they had nothing else to lose” (F). People were angry from not being listened to and being used only to allow rich people to get richer, and oh boy they showed it in the street.

The first protests took the government by surprise. They were not expecting the numbers of protestors, nor their determination. The protest were also completely different from the demonstration the state was used to deal with: there were no official leaders, making it really difficult for the government to negotiate, demonstrations were often not declared beforhand in prefectures (F), and people were systematically targetting (F) banks, major brands like Apple or McDonalds and luxury shops, causing millions euro worth of damages.

On the 1st of december 2018, protestors in Paris took over the Arc de Triomphe and completely overfloaded the police.

One policeman said afterward that on this day, “the Elysée could have fallen” (F). Police forces were not prepared, the right orders were not given at the right times and some police company were surounded by furious protestors. The same policeman said that in that moment, “they forgot about their code of ethics”, that they were just shooting rubber bullet wherever they could and “trying protect their life”. The following weeks, police put on steel fences around the Elysée and members of the government and their collaborators were asked to lock down and put away all of their documents(F) before the weekly demonstrations, in case the protestors were able to take over the buildings.

It was a turning point in the protests, and from then the orders given to the police changed completely. From then they’ve been allowed to litterally do whatever it took to keep the country in order. The government understood that the last thing between them and the furious people they betrayed was the police, and that’s precisely why they are trying to give them even more power today with the law on global security (see my last post, and probably a next one I’m gonna write soon because it would be too much for this post).

Since December 2018, a journalist, David Dusfresne, documents and keeps count on the police brutality, first on twitter and then on the online newspaper Mediapart(F) (TW for really graphic pictures of wounds and blood). For now he counted 4 deaths, 30 people who lost an eye due mainly to rubber bullets, 6 who lost a hand due to detonative grenades (France is being the only european country to use them against its own population), 346 wounded to the head (fractured skull mainly, due to the rubber bullets and baton blow) and a total of 969 documented reports on police brutality (and that’s only for 3 years).

Since then, a total of 9 police officers have been judged guilty, 7 of them being only suspended temporarily and avoiding prison, with only 2 of them ending up in prison(F) and being expelled from police forces.

People began to record the police more and more to prevent any brutality or to have proofs in case it happened, and then the police began to target journalists and anyone who had a camera.

They began to lie to people, telling them it’s forbiden to record the police (for now it isn’t), they forced photographs to delete their photos in the middle of demonstrations. They covered their ID number on their uniform (F), they covered their licence plates.

The government also began to talk about legitimate protest, aka the peacefull one, and put the name of “casseur” (thug) on anyone who would be too angry. to their taste, saying that the latter were taking the former in hostage. Basically they were saying tht yes, protestors took aver the arc de Triomphe, but it was only hooligans who just wanted to burn things, nothing political behind that.

Here began the preventive arrests (F) before demonstrations (arresting people who had done nothing on the only presumption they will), the arrest of journalists, the arrest of people having masks and protection glasses on them. From now on the administration can ban someone from public demonstration without going through the justice system.

Between November 2018 and November 2019, around 3,000 person(F) from the yellow vest movement were senteced to community services, fees, suspended prison sentence, and for 1/3 of them prison sentences. Those numbers are underestimated because many cases have not been judged yet. Some protestors were sentenced for shouting slogans(F), for wearing protective masks(F) (F), other were sent to prison for damaging radars(F) on highways, or for filming riots while wearing a yellow vest(F). There has been a massive tendency(F) for the state to sue people for “participation to a gathering with the intent to commit violences against persons or goods”, allowing them to give fees, community services or even prison sentences to people based only on the intent they gave them. Many people found guilty of attacking police forces were judged with the only proof being the declaration of police officers, and even though a lot of them claimed to be innocent they were still sentenced because they couldn’t bring proof of their innocence.(F) Amnesty International talks about the criminalization of demonstrators(F) that’s happening in France and warns about the instrumentalisation of laws that goes against international law. (F)

The ban on masks (they can be considered as weapons) during demonstration allows police to take protestors(F) who have some on them or in their car to the police station for a maximum of 48h for the sole purpose of making them miss the demonstration. This law is not applied nowadays because of Covid, but it still exists.

With the yellow vest movement, the part of the population who wasn’t used to the police actually began to endure what POC have been living for decades.

Racisme

France is a fucked up racist country. It was born in colonisation and slavery, and still rely on its former colonies to prosper economically. Young men perceived as Black or Arab are 24 more times likely to be stopped in the streets. The overwhelming majority of people killed by the police are black or arabic(F). When the police kills POC, the judiciary system often refuses to do a full investigation, refuses to hear some of the witnesses, refuses to watch some of the video tapes from surveillance cameras (F). A lot of autopsies are proved to be ballant lies, founding heart diseases(F) or blood infections(F) when the victim was actually killed by suffocation due to ventral tackle, a police technique that got France sentenced by the European court of human rights (F).

BAC

Since the mid 90′s, France has special police forces for working-class neighborhoods, the Brigade Anti-Criminalité (BAC), that operate in suburbs (in France rich people live in the city center and poor people in the suburbs) where a majority of imigrants and people from black and arabic descent live. BAC agents are all volunteers, they act in unmarked cars and civilians clothes and can carry weapons(F).

Their purpose is to roam the streets and to catch misdemeanor in the act, and they’ve been known (as well as regular police) to harass population by proceeding to systematic identity cheks(F) (often outside of what’s allowed by law), by insulting people(F), provoking people with racist and homophobic insults(F), by beating them(F) and charging them for “outrage” or “rebellion”(F) when they protest (charges that always give reasons to police officers when there’s no recordings of the arrest and allow them to get money for the prejudice). There have been reports of torture on adults(F), tennagers(F) and children(F), and cases where the BAC agents took victims to quiet places so they could beat them up(F). There have also been reports of agents inventing charges when their provocations didn’t push the victim to confront them(F).

They are basically above the law. There have been cases of massive corruption(F) where the agents returned to their unit(F) after the end of their suspension, and the person who leaked the info got fired.

As they are field agents, their role is also intelligence: they gather intells in the suburbs and they also infiltrate demonstration(F) and wear the attire of ��casseurs”, to gather intells on violent individuals. Since the beginning of the Yellow Vest movement, they’ve participating in containing demonstrations as well even though they don’t have any training in that field.

Refugees

Police is being extremely violent against refugees, particularly in Northern France and what used to be the “Jungle” of Calais. Amnesty International reported that police had been beating refugees with baton, confiscating their clothes and tent daily during winter (it also happened in Paris(F)), urinating on their tents, spraying teargas directly in the face of sleeping men. A group of 4 associations also issued a report(F) on police harassment against volunteers who helped refugees, with as much as 646 instances of police harassment and abuse against volunteers between November 2017 and June 2018 in Calais. Human rights observers reported harrasment techniques such as body search of female volunteers by male officers, insults, pushing, threats of legal suits and threats of arrest. Volunteers who reported these behaviours were told by the police internal investigation body that the reports where defamatory and could constitute a crime.

At the beginning of the year, associations that were not approuved by the state were forbidden to distribute free meals to refugees(F).

Islamophobia

France has always been an islamophobic country but it has been more public and accepted since the 2015 terrorist attacks. Many laws promoting laicity are actually used to target Islam:

The ban of public display of religious items in public institutions (schools, libraries, government buildings) target mainly women wearing hijabs when many mayors keep on installing nativity scenes during Christmas(F). In 2016 some cities made wearing a burkini (full body covering bathing suit) on the beach illegal and we had some astonishing scenes of police officers asking a women (who wasn’t even wearing a burkini) to undress on the beach in the name of the law.

The law that says people have to uncover their face when being in a public space only target muslim women and is now completely useless as we have the obligation to wear a mask everywhere

The law that says street prayers have to be autorized in prefecture beforehand only target muslim community: when a muslim association organized a street prayer(F) in 2017 to protest their eviction from their place of cult in the city center they were charged 10,000€ (5,000€ from the association and 5,000€ from its president), whereas catholics students organized a street prayer(F) last month and didn’t face any charges. Legally, any autorization must be asked more than 3 days in advance and in both cases it was only asked on the day before.

Following the killing of Samuel Paty, a teacher who was attacked mid october for showing caricatures of the prophet Mohamed in class, four 10 years old children were arrested for “terrorism apology”(F), interrogated for 10 hours and their houses checked by police forces in full gears. The minister of interior also disolved the Collective against Islamophobia in France, saying that, since it was prottesting against anti-terrorist laws (that are super islamophobic) it was promoting radical islamism and terrorism. A minute of silence was imposed in schools and the names of people who didn’t follow the procedure were given to the minister of education, who said “none of them will be left unpunished”.(F)

To sum up: the government is being super islamophobic but muslims who voice their concerns are seen as radical islamists and are associated with terrorists.  Furthermore, it’s now easier for islamophobic people in government to ban associations or to pass shady laws thanks to the state of emergency.

State emergency

Following the 2 years of state emergency (2015-2017), France passed a law against terrorism(F) that normalized a lot of the state emergency’s characteristics: it took power away from the justice system to give it to administrations, directly under the control of the government.

The government, who previously had to be accountable in front of a judiciary judge, can now do many things under the only control of an administrative judge(F). The actions of administrative judges are controled by the council of state, and the president of the said council is the prime minister or the minister of justice, named by the president.

Here is what they can now do(F):

place people under house arrest with obligation to check in police stations every day for a maximum of a year

deny or restrict access to public events to some people, or proceed to body search

make someone wear an electronic bracelet when they didn’t commit any infractions

close places of worship for a maximum of 6 months when the ideas discuted there promote hate, discrimination, violence or terrorism

require people to give their login of any account on internet to the police

investigate on civil servants using secret services files

create a national centralized file with the names of people travelling in and out of the country by plane or boat

With the autorisation of a judge of freedom and detentions, they can also search houses and seize computers or phones to inspect the contents.

If people refuse to do any of the above when they are asked to, they risk 3 years of prison and a fee that can go up to 45,000€.

The offense “terrorism apology” was used against hundreds of people, with a large proportion of them being underaged (1/3 of them in 2015), sometimes for something as unsignificant as a non-violent facebook comment, a situation pointed out by Amnesty International(F). The NGO also highlights the fact that the fear of being considered as an extremist or the fear of facing judiciary consequences sets limit to freedom of speech.

Since 2015, the government has used the power given to them by the state of emergency to place 24 environmental activists under house arrest for the duration of the COP21(F) and to search the house of people who were protesting against the construction of an airport(F), construction potentialy linked to corruption(F), and also to close temporarly more than 30 mosques and install security cameras inside(F).

The consulting national commission on human rights pointed out a “highjack” of the state emergency, that was used to silence protestors, unions and refugees with abusive means, like unnecessary handcuffing, adults and children being aimed at with assault riffle during house searches and house being damaged during searches.

2015 was also the year of the Intelligence Act, a law that allows inteligence agencies to install scanning devices on the infrastructure of telecom operators so they can collect data on communications that are likely to reveal a terrorist threat.

Covid 19

When the epidemy started to be problematic in France in February 2020, hospital workers had been on strike for 11 months(F) and were asking for doctors and nurses jobs opening, and more beds in hospital. At the beginning of february, 600 administrative hospital workers had quit(F) so they were not “accomplices of the management of misery”. Healthcare workers had been saying for years that the deterioration of the working conditions in hospitals were gonna lead to patients death.

Since the beginning of the 2000′s, 100 000 beds have been removed(F) from hospital services and there has been a budget cut close to 12 bilions euros(F) for the health services.

Then comes Covid 19, and the government asks health workers to always do more with less, in the name of common good. We applaud them at our windows every night, and then they don’t get the bonus(F) the government promised, the healthcare system doesn’t get any budget increase and even worse, it still has to face a 800 milions cut in the middle of the pandemic(F).

The newspaper Mediapart issued a report(F) exposing the lies of the government:

They decided to get only small quantities of masks at the beginning of january against experts opinion, they said the virus wouldn’t reach France.

Government lied about the usefullness of masks to prevent people asking for them when they didn’t have some to distribute to the whole population. They said it was useless, and even dangerous because we didn’t know how to use them, they actively encouraged people not to wear them, and they lied about mask shortage. I really want to insist on that point, the instensity of communication on the subject was incredible. Every day we had many different high-ranked person in the government telling us on TV, on the radio or in newspaper that we shouldn’t wear masks. They only made wearing masks compulsory in public spaces mid July, 6 months after the first case in France(F).

Healthcare workers didn’t have enough masks and thus faced higher risks of contamination but the government still allowed non essential big companies like Airbus to use milions of the precious FFP2 masks. The government still refuses to give the number of healthcare workers who died from Covid19(F), the only count we have is made by journalists, and it’s believed to be underestimated.

To this day, healthcare workers are still on strike for better working conditions and better pay. I took this pic earlier this month from one of the firestations in my city, you can read written in white paint on the doors “understaffed, population in danger”, “18 months of strike and still NOTHING”, “Covid bonus ???” and “SOS”. Firefighters also write this on their trucks and their helmets, and hospitals have had banners deployed for more than a year now. All of these people are still working to ensure everyone’s access to health services but they refuse to transfer data to the state sickness insurance for example (and they are now facing administrative sanctions(F) and are threatened to not be given cancer drugs if they don’t end the strike(F)).

Regarding Covid, we are one of the only countries in europe to use self-filled certificates to be able to go outside. These certificates are controlled by the police, and like I said earlier, increased police controls harm a certain part of the population (young people and POC). Amnesty International issued a report(F) on the violences comited during french lockdown, pointing out repetitive and significant illegitimate actions from the police, such as beatings, use of tasers, illegal arrests, racists and homophobics insults and verbal threats. In April 2020, Mohamed Gabsi, a homeless person, was killed by the police after being arrested for being outside during the lockdown(F). The officers who killed him are still in service.

The covid crisis brought us in the worst recession we had since WW2, and the Secour Populaire (french association that helps poor people) had to help 45% more people than it helped in 2019(F). In my city, there are so many people coming for food distribution on certain days they had to install permanent fences in the street so people can queue in order.

Corruption and Other Stuff

In France (as in many other countries) it’s rare to have politicians who’ve never been prosecuted in any judiciary or administrative case.

Here I’m only gonna tell you who have been accused and who have been prosecuted for what in Macron���s government, and quite frankly it’s not exhaustive because one wikipedia page just brings me to 5 more.

The following tab is quite heavy so feel free to just check the left column with the legend.

(Now let me cry thinking about this Swedish minister who had to quit over a chocolate bar)

(All my sources are from french newspapers, I can give them if you ask me but I’m not gonna put them here because there are way too many)

People who had to quit the first government were still appointed deputy governor of the Bank of France (Sylvie Goulard), president of the national assembly (Richard Ferrand) and chief of foreign affaires commission at the national assembly (Marielle de Sarnez). They are being investigated for corruption and embezzlement and they still have a successfull political career, and more important they still heavily influence the laws of our country and of Europe. Sylvie Goulard was even chosen by Macron to seat at the European Commission but european deputies decided it was fucked up and rejected her appointment (F).

In this list I only talked about members of the government but there has been other scandals linked to people around Macron.

Benalla cases: It all began when we discovered Alexandre Benalla, chief of security and travels for the president, was participating in demonstration as a policeman (which he wasn’t) and used his position to beat up protestors and passerby. The rest of the case is filled with destruction and hiding of evidences(F), illegal sharing of public surveillance videotapes by the police, undeclared guns(F), illegal but unpunished use of data by the police(F) and the Elysée(F), breaking of the judiciary control by Benalla, illegal diplomatic passports and meeting with african’s leaders, russian contracts with an alleged mafia boss(F), office searchs for a newspaper ordered by the State, who tried to seize the proofs and the sources the newspaper had on the case(F) and so on. The case involves several members of the government and members of special forces, and some journalists who were writing on it were then auditionned for disclosure of state secret(F). The case in general highlighted the impunity members of the government and police officers have, as well as anyone who is close to the president, but also the dysfunction in the justice system and the impossibility for high ranked people to face justice. The fucker is still free, taunt people on twitter and still gives interviews to national television.

Kohler case: Alexis Kohler, general secretary of the Elysee and Macron right hand man during his campain, hid his personnal links to the sea transporters MSC and then attributed them huge state funds. He also lied in his involvement in the decision. We discovered Macron sent a letter to the national financial prosecutor's office to clear him, which they did, until an anti-corruption association relaunched legal proceedings. The guy is now being prosecuted for corruption and bribery. (F) (F)

Conclusion

Fuck the police, eat the rich, let’s forbid them from being elected, a next long post on the Law on Global Security the governement is trying to pass is gonna come soon if you’re interested.

Please tell me if you see any inconsistency in this post, I tried to source it as much as I could and to verify everything I wrote but like anyone else I have bias and sometimes I wrote things at 5am so I’m aware I might be incorrect  and I’m open to constructive criticism. Also sorry for my approximate english sometimes.

[morrigansmuses]

3 Golden Rules.

On Ethical disappointments. 

I was raised to be tolerant. To consider the views and opinions of others, to keep and open mind. I was a social outsider (homeschooled due to racism in the local school.) I vowed I wouldn’t ever exclude people for being different to me or having different values. I was desperate to make and keep friends. More than anything.

I was 15 in the late 1990s. Lonely as hell. I decided that I would befriend absolutely anyone who would have me. Essentially anyone who wouldn’t beat me up on sight for being foreign.

I decided that I had 3 and only 3 dealbreakers in terms of friendship.

RULE 1. They couldn’t be cruel to animals.

RULE 2. They coudn’t sexually abuse children.

RULE 3 They couldn’t be a card carrying Nazi.

If anyone in my life did any of those things I couldn’t associate with them anymore. But barring that I would try to accept them as individuals. 

Thats a pretty low bar right? I mean how could anyone fail to meet those insanely low standards?

See back then I didn’t know that shades of grey existed. I knew in theory that we were all imperfect beings, but I didn’t know what that meant yet in reality.

So I began to make friends. With normal kids. Actually probably nicer than average kids because they were sweet and sensitive enough to accept me for who I was when no one else would.

So the first hurdle I came across was that some of these people I was friends with enjoyed hunting. They would say for meat. I get that. Better than factory farming right? less cruel, less wasteful.

“You shouldn’t eat meat unless you’re willing to kill it yourself” They’d say virtuously.  

But then I saw them in action. Delighting in the act of killing in a way that I knew wasn’t healthy. Laughing at the kid goat’s head bursting in a shower of gore or the way an animal screamed upon being shot. Killing more than they needed… That’s an impulse I don’t believe humans should engender in themselves.

But it was for food. Right? So I overlooked it and silenced the voice in my heart.

One day my best friend shot a stray cat with his bb gun just for the laugh. It didn’t kill the cat or anything but the animal yelped and ran away. I was so upset and shocked that I burst into tears and it all came pouring out. Was he training himself to become a sociopath? I asked him.

He apologised. He never did anything like it again. He was very kind to animals, especially cats, ever since and doesn’t hunt them anymore for any reason.

I forgave.

That’s the first time I remember compromising a core value. It was like a tooth being pulled from my 15 year old head. 

I don’t regret it.

We’re still best friends. 

The second hurdle that started to crack my young heart was the undeniable fact that in the early 2000s almost every guy I knew in his early 20s had a girlfriend between that ages of 12 and 15. NEVER OLDER. I can’t stress this enough. They would vomit in disgust at the thought of a crone of 18 or 19. They were also VERY vocal about their desire and right to have sex with children after a few drinks. By the time I was 20 I knew I had aged out of the 20s dating pool. I wasn’t attracted to older men. 

No matter. I’m asexual and prefer platonic relationships anyway.

To this day I’ve never had a romantic relationship with a man. Because once I realised that Rule 2 wasn’t one any of them could keep, the trust was broken.

It wasn’t only men either. My closest girlfriend was a 26 year old substitute teacher who fucked one of her 15 year old students on a drunk night out once…

So they both had fun and boys that age are up for anything right? I mean. He probably still boasts about it today…

Right?

Plus… She was all I had. Like the only one I had at the time. I was so scared of losing her.

I turned a blind eye and ear. I tolerated. I didn’t have to approve of their teenage girlfriends did I? After all there were so many of them that if I cut them out of my life I’d have no friends ever again. Because the whole of society looked like them…

Thats the truth.

People in my extended family have dated 17 or 18 year old girls and encouraged them to drop out of school to have their children. People I love have done that.

I once knew a handsome, intelligent and charming man. He was dating a family member for a few months. He often defended the right of adult men to date teens. “Girls mature more quickly than boys.” He’d argue. Everyone would agree. After all hadn’t my great grandmother been 12 years old when she met my great grandfather and married him on her 16th birthday (with parental permission)? He was in his 20s. Just a boy himself surely? “We all know what children boys in their 20s are right?” Said my Mother… Whom I love very much.

Excuses were made.

Years later I discovered the the handsome, intelligent and charming man had been raping a 6 year old the entire time we’d known him. He is still wanted by the police today.

My father tells that when he was a boy of 18 back in the 70s he had kicked an older German man, a respected family friend, out of his car because the man had asked him to pull over, he had something important to tell him. When he did so, the man said that the Holocaust was a myth. An exaggeration, a Zionist hoax.

My Father was dating my mother at the time. She’s Jewish. So is his uncle, a Holocaust survivor.

He yelled at the man not to talk shit and made him walk home.

I am not my father.

The first time a Holocaust denier (a respected local businessman) voiced their opinion to me I froze. Then laughed. Surely he must be kidding... I argued briefly before realising that he’d made up his mind.

My well meaning people said I’d made a mistake. It was my job, they said, to change his mind. To educate him. Otherwise how would he learn?

I didn’t speak to him again but I still nod at him in the street because he employs a few of my friends and I wouldn’t want to make things awkward for them.

And also I don’t want him to yell at me. 

I have worked with Holocaust survivors and have survivors in my immediate family and I still nod in the street at a Holocaust Denier because we are raised to be polite aren’t we? Let’s not make a scene. 

We’re mature adults.

Aren’t we?

People are starting to turn weirder than they used to be. Politically.

My Leftist friends are in a secret facebook group... Strenuously defending China’s Uyghur genocide because Communism can do no wrong… And at the same time saying all the Israelis need to be killed for what they’ve done to the Palestinians. One suggests a biological weapon tailored to Jews.

My Centrist friends are suggesting we “Hang up democracy for a while” in order to combat global warming and welcome a global police state and stop “kicking off” about our rights all the time. “Maybe we need a jackboot up the arse” one of them says.

And the ones that aren’t on the Left?

My facebook feed these days is getting awfully full of Rothschild memes.

“We own every bank in the world and funded both sides of every war since Waterloo.” They say, next to a grinning caricature of Jacob de Rothschild. Reminiscent of a Nazi cartoon of a “Rat Jew.”

Even a hedge fund billionaire prick doesn’t deserve that, does he?

I don’t comment. What’s the point? They’ve watched all the youtube and don’t read history books on principal.

My Brother is getting into Qanon. So is my Sister in Law.

She follows the medical teachings of a man who thinks the Jews invented Chemotherapy to kill the Germans after the war. Apparently he is becoming more and more popular.

Eccentrics.

Thats all.

I’m half Jewish. Like My Brother.

One of the Survivors I know said that 3 weeks after the Nazi propaganda came into the school he attended, he was in Bergen Belsen and half his family was dead.

His neighbour was jealous because his father had 2 more cows than he did.

I hear Marine Le Pen is neck and neck with Macron to win France.

A good friend of mine said it's because by 2030 Muslims will outnumber white people in Europe. He won’t read the articles I send him. But he sure sends me a lot of YouTubes.

I ignore them because I don’t want to hate him. Maybe he ignores my articles for the same reason.

Hey 15 year old me…. You, skinny thing with the ethics, the braces and black eyeliner…

Those compromises I made were made out of love... And also fear. 

Please stop looking at me like that little girl.

“It’s true” writes my friend. They’re trying to breed us out. It’s all an elite Zionist plot.”

I close Whatsapp.

Here I go again I guess…

[stopforamoment]

Part Seven: Demonstrations (Series 18, Part 7 of 9)

Series Eighteen: The Conference, Day One (9 Parts) Part Seven: Demonstrations (Series 18, Part 7 of 9) My masterlist is at the end of my bio.

Book: The Royal Romance (After Book Three) Pairing: Bastien Lykel x OC Rinda Parks Word Count: 1,208 Rating: M for Language Author’s Note: Obligatory disclaimer that Pixelberry Studios owns the TRR characters and my pocketbook with those darn diamond scenes. OFC with all of her quirks is all mine. My apologies if Tumblr or I do something stupid when I try to post this. The keep reading link shows up on my laptop but not my phone. Ugh. Thank you @asherella-is-a-dork-3 for always being my sounding board! Thank you @cora-nova @silviasutton1989 @bobasheebaby​ @riseandshinelittleblossom​ for being my thirsty Bastien friends and for still being a part of the journey! Series Summary: This focuses on day one of the conference and Rinda’s interactions as a professional, friend, and girlfriend.

Chapter Summary: We learn a little more about Rinda’s grandpa and events from her life in Wisconsin. This series takes place in the beginning/middle of November, before the French Yellow Vests demonstrations that started November 17, 2018. My thoughts and prayers to everyone who is affected by these events.

Demonstrations

“So Tria, you told me that you only know conversational French and that you learned it from Grandma Lorinda.”

Rinda nodded. “True story. My grandpa was born in France but came to America when he was a child, and his parents encouraged him to assimilate as quickly as possible. He wanted to know more about his homeland and culture, but his parents were adamant that he Americanized as soon as possible. They came when the depression hit France, around 1931, before the U.S. clamped down on its immigration quotas. They wanted to leave a lot of bad memories from their war behind and just have a better life, achieve the American Dream. “Anywho . . . he died when I was pretty young, so Grandma Lorinda was only able to pass along the basics. And even then, she spoke French with a very heavy German accent and it was very dated, from the 1940s. Those are some of the reasons I don’t consider my French to be very good—and why Nadia has so many great stories about my gaffs.”

Nadia gave her friend a warm smile. “Actually, Rinda’s French isn’t as bad as she says it is and she picked up a lot from our trips. It’s just that our trips to France were cross-categorical. It would be a literature class through the English department, an immersion experience through the foreign language department, and a chance to research a historical location for the history class. We would have students read boring academic articles in French, and that’s where Rinda struggled.” Nadia shrugged. “We all struggle with that boring shit, even though part of being an academic is to pretend to love—and understand—that crap.”

“So where would you go, and Nadia, do you still do the tour with students?”

Nadia smiled at Drake. “Château des Milandes. It’s in France’s Aquitaine region, near the Dordogne River.” Nadia laughed. “And before you even ask, it’s about a six-, maybe seven-hour drive from Paris. At one point the château was owned by Josephine Baker, who was a prominent entertainer during the Harlem Renaissance.” Nadia nodded toward Rinda. “That’s Rinda’s main area of study, although she also helped me teach some of the French classics.”  

Rinda nudged Bastien and whispered in his ear. “She did a famous banana dance. True story!” Then she winked, knowing how much he hated bananas.

Nadia arched her brows but turned back to Drake. “She used the château during World War II to hide Jewish refugees and stash weapons for the French Resistance. That’s where the history department focused, and Rinda helped with that too.” Rinda quickly interrupted before Nadia could say anything else. “Yup. I’m a history dork and my grandpa was born in that area. I seriously geeked out in the historical records building whenever we went.”

Drake laughed. “So what did you do, Nadia?”

Nadia waved her hand in the air and assumed an air of ennui.

“I got drunk on wine, ate good food, and spoke French. That was my cultural contribution.” She smirked. “But all of that is over. Too many budget cuts, so I moved back to France. My wife is an American and was reluctant to leave, but it was the best choice we ever made.” She looked at Rinda. “I know things weren’t easy when you left, and I missed you, but you left at the right time. From a professional standpoint, there’s nothing left for you there and everything for you here.” She reached across the table to squeeze Rinda’s hand. “I’m so happy for you.”

“And I’m happy for you and Kathleen.”

The ladies smiled before Nadia turned back to Drake. “Your question about if we do the trip anymore. Since I’m not at the university I won’t do the trip anymore, but I don’t even know if they can do the trip for very much longer because of budget cuts and limited course offerings. And especially this year.”

Rinda nodded. “Jacques called me a few days ago to check if people from the university were still making the trip. A lot will happen between now and January, but he was worried about us. It sounds like there are constant demonstrations in Marseille and although we should be safe by the château he didn’t recommend going into Paris with students. Even during the week.”

Rinda felt the slight change of Bastien’s body posture when she said that, so she continued the conversation. “Nadia, what have you heard?”

Nadia smiled. “Well, you know me and Kathleen. We do plan on joining a gilets jaunes demonstration next Saturday. I want to make a difference without violence and I want to be a part of such a historical movement. I haven’t done anything like that since Act 10.” She sighed. “I’m opposed to Macron, but I’m not an extremist. I want to be supportive, but I’m sure it will go on longer and be more violent than we are prepared to deal with.”

Act 10. One of Scott Walker’s first acts as governor of Wisconsin, the start of the teacher demonization and the beginning of the end of the state’s education system as Rinda knew it. No more collective bargaining for teachers, so thousands of teachers went to the state capitol to protest. Rinda went for one day, on a weekend, to be a part of the experience. She didn’t want to leave her classroom, and even though it was exhilarating to be a part of something so big and so historical, she was afraid the entire time. Many people brought their children so they could experience the history. Perhaps if Henry were older she would have brought him, but it only took one person to destroy a peaceful demonstration. It was always in the back of her mind, and it terrified her.

Jameson went too, for several days. Extra security was needed to protect the protesters, so local departments across the state sent officers to help. Jameson walked the halls while protesters slept, making sure they were safe and their personal belongings were secure. It only took one person to start a chain reaction that would turn a demonstration into an insurrection. There was one day when Jameson had to stand next to piles of protesters’ personal belongings “to guard them.” But Jameson saw the bomb sniffing dogs carefully examine every pile. It only took sick fuck, with one explosive device . . .

It was a lot of overtime pay and they squirreled it away, knowing Rinda’s job security was in question for as long as Walker remained governor. But Rinda was relieved when the demonstrations were over, even though nothing changed and Act 10 still happened. Jameson was home safe with her and Henry.

In Wisconsin they were lucky. But in France? “Nadia, please be safe. You and Kathleen.” She shrugged, her way of trying to physically shake a bad feeling. “When it’s finally over we all need to make a trip to Château des Milandes. Laura too. And this time just wine and good food. No students. I might even limit my geek out in the historical records.”

Bastien smiled as he leaned down to kiss Rinda. “I’ll believe that when I see it.”

[cloudxaerith]

What world needs to know about what's happening in france

By checking around the net and chatting with some fellow french and foreign people, I did realise that people in the world didn't really get why french people are rioting. Sure, all begin with the gas tax. But before that Macron suppressed tax for the rich (wich is name ISF). Before that he spent so much time explaing to the world that french people are refractory gallic. Telling people that they're just lazy because you just have to cross the road to get a job... And so on ! This guy is an arrogant piece of shit. Kinda reverse robinhood taking to poor to give to the rich.

Sure everything began because of gas tax, but now the government took it back, and it's not even our problem anymore. We wants less tax, more purchasing power and most of all we want citizens' initiative referendum wich will allow us to propose law, dismissed politician, repeal law, and change our constitution.

Last monday, Macron adress to the people, not in live, but with a recorded message wich was taken as an insult. He announced that minimume wage was going to be increased by 100 euros, that tax on retirement (wich is named CSG) will be lower for the people with less than 2000 €/month and that our additional hours will be payed without any tax on it.

It sounds nice huh? But in fact all of this was a lie. The 100 € on minimum wage will, in fact, be add to some wellfare (wich is name prime d'activité) that you can get if you are bellow a certain wage. But the fact is, this wellfare is count based on the household income, and... that just exactly the same for the CSG. So, if you live in relationship you're fucked for the retirement tax and the minimum wage wellfare. Plus, this minimum wellfare is directly taken on our income tax..; So in fact we're not going to get anything but still payed for it.

And now here we are, government still don't get how mad we are and the big shit storm that coming for them... I hope everything made sense since it's a bit difficult for me to explain all of this in english. Don't hesitate to ask question if something isn't clear or if you want any additional information :)

This picture were taken last saturday in paris. People are still a lot in the street, even if the government said otherwise... In fact many people (around 40 000) were blocker at the entrance of Paris...

[leftistenjolras]

only a winner and a loser

FANDOM Les Misérables PAIRING Enjolras/Grantaire (pre-slash) TAGS Pre-Relationship / Alternate Universe - Politics / Alternate Universe - Modern Setting / French Politics / Enjolras is an anarchist / far-left Amis de l'ABC READ ON AO3 (link)

If I'm the lesser of two evils, who's this man, who's this act I hide behind? Bastille

 May 7th, 10:04

“Are you coming to the Musain tonight ?” Combeferre asks, and Enjolras shrugs. “It depends, if they start something on the streets.” “Nah, I've heard they'll do it tomorrow. Everyone will just get shitfaced drunk tonight. Trying to forget.” “Some people are going to celebrate though.” “Yeah, well, we can't support these ones, uh?”

Enjolras smiles wryly. It hurts to think about the results now. It hurts to think about anything related to the elections. They’ve hoped for so much, and got so little. The first round was a massive disappointment for everyone. The Amis de l’ABC were so angry that night. They stayed angry for two weeks. Today Enjolras doesn't even find the strength to be angry. It's not that they particularly believed in Mélenchon’s ability to change the world. He's a reformist, they're revolutionaries. He’s a social-democrat, they're anarchists. But, well, it was still the true left. And now it's Macron versus Le Pen and they're just so, so, so fucked.

“But everyone will be there, Enjolras, you should come. It'll be better than just moping on your own.” “Yeah, I'll think about it, Ferre, don't worry,” he answers. “Do you think she could win ?” Combeferre asks, and Enjolras closes his eyes. “I don't know. I don't think so. She failed the debate. Plus with the “barrage républicain”, most of the other candidates asked to vote for Macron. Even if most of the Insoumis decide not to vote, there's still something like seventy percent of the fillonists who will vote for him, plus the socialists. She has no chance.” “I wouldn't be so sure,” Combeferre answers. “There's still part of the fillonists who will vote for her. The Manif Pour Tous followers. And Macron has been really bad, these past two weeks, not trying to rally the Insoumis, instead accusing them.” “Yeah, well, they might not vote for him, but they won't vote for Le Pen. Abstention will be high, but she'll never get enough votes to win.” “I really hope you're right, Enjolras,” Combeferre sighs. “I really hope you're right.”

May 7th, 14:02

“If she wins, they're going to blame us again,” Courfeyrac says, taking the glass Musichetta gives him. They're in the backroom of the Musain, helping Musichetta and Grantaire prepare for the electoral night. Whatever the results are, the kind of people who come to the café won't be satisfied, and neither will the ABC. Enjolras just hopes they'll put their anger to good use. “They wouldn't be totally wrong, though,” Cosette provides, and all the faces turn to her. “No, no, don't get me wrong, I'm not voting either ! But I know that it increases the risks.” “But we're ready to face the risks, though, aren't we ?” Combeferre asks, and Cosette nods. “Because we're not voters, we're activists. We are involved in politics all year long, not just during the elections.” “We're still fucked if she wins, though,” Musichetta declares. “We're fucked if he wins too,” Enjolras answers. “As Combeferre said, we'll be in the streets whatever happens. We've never changed anything by voting for reformists or socdems, anyway,” he says, settling a table. “But we're going to change things with the protests”. “But if they vote for Macron, do you think they'll protest against him ?” Grantaire says, leaving his silence for the first time. Enjolras rolls his eyes. “We know you don't believe in what we do, Grantaire, you don't believe in anything,” Enjolras snaps. “You're wrong, Enjolras,” Grantaire smirks. “I believe in the natural selfishness of men.” “If you were right, Grantaire, then no revolution would have succeeded. But we both know that's not what happened.” “People were hungry, they couldn't have a job, they couldn't feed their children, they cared about that only. No one’s going to make a revolution because of values, Enjolras, as beautiful as they are.” “That's where we don't agree.” “There are a lot of things on which we don't agree, Enjolras.” “Stop fighting, boys. We'll see what we do depending the results,” Musichetta cuts them. “Now we gotta prepare for the anarchists you lot are bringing to my café tonight.”

 May 7th, 16:38

“I voted”, Joly declares when he joins them in the backroom. Enjolras, sitting on the floor, quietly scrolling through Twitter, was suddenly not so quiet anymore. “I’m sorry ? You did what ?” “I voted,” Joly says again. “It hurt, but I decided that I wanted to vote.” “You voted for Macron,” Enjolras repeats, unbelieving. Joly swallows, uncomfortable. “I voted for Macron.” Enjolras snaps his eyes shut. “I can’t believe you did that.” “It was my choice, ok ? I wanted to vote. I’m just- there are too many risks. I couldn’t …” “We get it, Joly, don’t worry”, Musichetta says, giving Enjolras an insistent look that shut him up. “No one’s gonna judge anyone here. As long as you didn’t vote for Le Pen, that is.” Grantaire, beside her, scoffed, and Enjolras shook his head. “I won’t say anything,” he declares, but everyone knows what he thinks. “You can’t ask for people not to say anything if you don’t vote, and then despise those who vote, Enjolras,” Grantaire starts, but Cosette pats his shoulder, giving him a pointed look, efficiently calming him down. “I just don’t understand, that’s it,” Enjolras starts. “You just- you could have told us. We could have talked about it.” “You would have tried to dissuade me, I know you, you know. But it’s done now. I just don’t want to feel guilty if anything happens.” “She won’t win,” Enjolras declares, confident, and Grantaire snorts, but Enjolras pretends he hasn’t heard. “And even if she won,” Combeferre starts, “and I trust Enjolras when he says she won’t, but even if she won, we wouldn’t be the ones responsible for it. Because when Estrosi or Valls kept spreading the ideas that got her there, we fought against it, we fought against racism, fascism, long before the elections. So, fuck their barrage républicain. It’s not our fault.” Cosette nods, thoughtful. “What do we do tonight, if she wins ?” She asks. “She won’t win,” Enjolras repeats. “I know, but just imagine if she does.” “We start fighting,” Combeferre provides, and everyone nods. There’s fire in their eyes. The ABC are fighters, that’s what they do. They fight through words and through protests, but in the end, it’s the cause that matters, not the means. And tonight, the cause needs them. Tonight, people everywhere in France are gathered, terribly angry, terribly disappointed, and they’ve never been that ready before, to destroy a system that’s been sick forever. “The ABC meets tonight, and I’m sure many others Musain regulars plan to come to listen to the results. If she wins, people are going to be so angry, they’ll start protesting immediately. Paris is going to burn,” Enjolras claims, excitedly. “Don’t say that, Enjolras, that’s really not what we should do. Be angry, of course. Protest, maybe. But we need time to organize. With the state of emergency, the election, May the first, the police are everywhere. If we do anything as chaotic as what you say, we’re going to get killed. It’s a suicide. We don’t want this.” Everyone nods. “Let’s just wait a little, see what people do. There’s the Social Third Round tomorrow. People are going to plan things. For now, we wait for the results. We stay together - and by together, I don’t only mean the ABC, I mean us, the activists. This is no time to divide. Whatever happens, tomorrow, we go to the protest, we meet people there. There will be the NPA, there will be the syndicates, there will be the anarchists. It’s time to make allies.” As always, Combeferre is the wisest, and no one can disagree. They just go back to work, silently. Enjolras, still on his phone, is trying to invite as many persons to the Musain as possible. Musichetta keeps washing the dishes. Grantaire keeps doing nothing, only supervising everyone with a smirk on his face. The world keeps turning, and the fascists keep voting.

 May 7th, 19:30

The bar has just opened, and people are already angry. Behind the counter, Grantaire and Musichetta prepare the drinks of the first revolutionaries who have arrived, dressed in red and black, with fire in their eyes and venom in their speech. There’s the ABC, the regulars, who usually hold their meeting in the backroom in front of the fond eyes of Musichetta and the cynic gaze of Grantaire. Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Combeferre and Joly were the first to arrive, along with Cosette who never officially joined the ABC but is always there with Marius and, often, more useful than him. Marius has then arrived with some of the Insoumis he works with. Though Enjolras often mocks his admiration for Mélenchon, the Insoumis are still allies among them, as long as no one urges them to “vote useful”. At six o’clock, Eponine has taken Gavroche from his friend’s house and brought him to the meeting. At six thirty, the rest of the ABC arrived : Bossuet, Feuilly, Bahorel, and Jehan with his boyfriend Montparnasse, an anarchist who wears black even when he’s not in protests, for the aesthetic. Soon, some others come. There are regulars, people who assist the ABC meetings though they never cared to join, people who demonstrate with them. Two CGT members, some anarchists, some Insoumis, NPA members. They're here in the hope to change the world one day, but for now they just wish for it not to collapse tonight. But as Combeferre once said, with Macron as a president, they'd be able to fight for progress. With Le Pen, they'd struggle to preserve even their right to exist. They're all gathered around the little TV that Musichetta has settled for the occasion, chatting on their own, not yet listening to the journalist's declarations. Like every election night, the atmosphere is tense, but this time more than ever. The first round was a time of hope : the Insoumis wanted Mélenchon to win, and though they wouldn't admit it on the moment, the rest of them did to. It would have been too beautiful. Le Pen ejected from the beginning, a true leftist opposition, and though Macron would have probably won in the second round, the fascists wouldn't have had the legitimacy they have found now. In the streets, it's hard for them. The racists, the Le Penists, they used to hide, they used to be ashamed. Of course, it changed since 2002. The Front National was now a party that could win. But these years more than ever, Marine Le Pen did everything she could to normalise their party, to un-demonize their opinions. And during these two weeks, the frontists knew that 20% of the population thought just like them. They were not ashamed anymore, they were proud. They could talk about it. And now everything was tense. As if it wasn't enough to know that a person out of four had voted for a party that was founded by former SS members, people now seemed to believe that the Front National was a party just like the others and that protesting against them or even opposing them in a debate was opposing democracy. And after all, they were quite lucky. Only 5% of Paris had voted for Le Pen in the first round. Mostly, they only met the fascists on the Internet, and it was already too much. But sometimes, when they were together, they could almost forget that the rest of the country was that obtuse to change. They could believe they'd change the world, and that was the most important. Because in this kind of movements, hope is the biggest part.. The moment you lose hope, you can't achieve anything anymore. The moment you lose hope, fighting becomes too hard. It's easier to survive in a world where you don't belong if you're sure that you have the power to change it. “She's going to win,” Bossuet declares suddenly, worried. Musichetta and Joly press themselves at his side, shaking their heads. “No, sweetheart, she won't,” Musichetta affirms, confident. “You've heard Enjolras. The country isn't that shitty. The barrage républicain will give legitimacy to Macron, and the percentage might give legitimacy to the frontists, but she can't win.” “Listen, everyone,” Enjolras declares, suddenly standing up, and people at the counter get quiet to listen to him. “Tonight, whatever happens, is a night of loss for us. Either the winner is a fascist one-eyed daughter” (people in the audience start boo-ing) “or the winner neo liberalism and social regression like we haven't had since Vichy. But the fact is - we don't need to be afraid. Of course, neither situation is pleasant for us. No left candidate still in the race,” (the Insoumis shake their heads, silently disapproving the disqualification of Mélenchon) “and everyone urging us to vote for the “lesser of two evils” as if Macron had suddenly become the only chance of salvation for humanity. But there's a thing that we need not to forget. What happens during the next five years is not only determined by tonight's results. Whoever our new president is, we're not going to stop fighting. The most important thing to do will be taking the street, as soon as tomorrow, to show that we are not satisfied with all of this. We are not satisfied,” he repeats, and his restricted audience cheers, “with having as a president those who campaign against our rights. We're not satisfied with an electoral system that gets a candidate elected when less than ten percent of the population believes in their political agenda. We are not satisfied with being governed by politicians who never knew what it is to be poor, to be discriminated against, to work, to struggle !” The audience cheers again, and Enjolras grins, galvanised. Even Grantaire almost seems to believe in what he says, when he's got this kind of fire in his eyes. When he realizes this, Enjolras’s smile grows even bigger. “It's time we show this kind of people that we exist. It's time they realize we're not going to stay quiet and stay still while they pulverise every single human right that our ancestors fought for and sacrificed for. We are ungovernable!” This time some people at the bar start applauding and standing up to follow Enjolras. Courfeyrac whistles, enthusiastic. Combeferre seems a little more worried for his friend, but there's pride in his gaze. “Comrades,” Enjolras says again, “today is a turning point in French democracy. After tonight, nothing will ever be the same. Our system has failed us. French citizens held onto it for so long, because they believed it was the only way to express our opinions. Do you know why they believed that ? Because they were never given an alternative. They were never shown that there are other ways, there are other systems. French representative democracy is dead. Let's not cry over its corpse for too long, but instead prepare for its successor! Power to the people!” The audience explodes into cheers. Enjolras is grinning so hard Grantaire thinks he's going to get blinded forever by the light that emanates from him.

 May 7th, 19:54

“What if everything was actually a joke and Poutou is the real winner of the election?” “What if Macron was actually an anarchist that tried to infiltrate the government in order to destroy it from the inside ?” “What if Le Pen won but it's actually just Russia interfering and Hollande discovers it ?” “What if you just shut up with your theories Courfeyrac?” Courfeyrac pouts but he knows that Enjolras is actually just terribly, terribly nervous. No one in this bar wants Macron as a president, of course, but the alternative being Le Pen, well, they'd be quite relieved to see the banker's face at eight o'clock. “Everyone should shut up, actually,” Combeferre declares, quietly aggressive. We're going to have the results in five minutes. Just drink, Enjolras, Courfeyrac, everyone. It'll get easier.” “Ah, Combeferre, always the voice of reason.” It's Grantaire, of course, as if the prospect of drinking was enough to wake him up from his semi-trance of the afternoon. He feels less strongly about the election ; not having campaigned that much, actually. He helped the ABC, of course, that's what he does. But his own soul was not as much in the action as Enjolras’s or Combeferre’s was, for example. “Drink with me, fearless leader,” he says, and Enjolras rolls his eyes. “There's no leader in an anarchist society, Grantaire.” “But anarchy can't work, and you know this.” “If we keep saying it's impossible and we don't try to change the world and the mentalities to make it possible then yes-” “Guys, I don't want to interrupt, but there's like eleven seconds left.” The room gets quiet. They hold their breath. “The new president of France is,” Pujadas announces, “Emmanuel Macron !”. They breathe again. “OK, OK, it's alright, she lost, we're fine.” Cosette declares, breaking the silence that seems to have taken the room. “Now we fight against him.”

May 7th, 20:01 For the people of France, a new fight is starting. (Until the Earth is free).

[pklcha]

follow the link and read that wonderful post to see what I’m answering to because I refuse to reblog this ;)

Ok. Ok hold on one FUCKING minute please :)

As a french person, I am not to be insulted without answering ok ?

Alright, let’s take that little thing down from paragraph to paragraph.

For the sport part ?

 I cannot disagree. Media have been spamming non stop about football even tho half of the population do not give damn.

There is actually 3 types of people in here. Those who love football, those who do not, and those that are just following the flow. I am personnally of the second type and I was rooting for Crotia because I knew it would only cause issues in the general life. (big shock, it did. Sexual aggression, explosions, looting ect).

BUT BUT BUT

From what I know : Kylian Mbappé and some others membre of the football team actually give their mony to charity.

Mbappé gives money to the association ‘Premiers de cordée”, an association for hospitilized children to help them do sport. This association also helps sensibilize schools and big companies to handicaps. 

Florian Thauvin, right ailier, goes to Marseille’s Hospital to go to children. 

Also, the team and the FFF (Fédération Française de Football // French Federation of Football) decided collectively to take some of the money to give to a comon wallet for all the other members of FFF that came with them in Russia. (Water people, Doctors, Organisators ect.). 

So, that’s the Football part done. And despite how much I Hate the sport, media-spamming and community, I cannot take that away from them.

Onto the next one. 

“France is one of the most nationalist countries in the world”. 

That is both true and incorrect. 

France has a lots, LOTS of ethnicities. Making it multi-ethnic. Mostly african-french and arabico-french. I am personnally part french, part Kabil ( a region of Algeria) and Part Italian. I am proud of what I am and also proud of my country because mine was the only one that went on and said ‘fuck off king, yu done doing shit to us.’ America ? They couldn’t have done it without our support and they were not directly in link with their ‘home country’. As for England, there was a revolution, yes, but it was a ‘gentle’ one. Us ? Pfrr who cares ? King, Chruch and Nobles don’t listen to us ? Ok, get the Mofo Guillotine ! 

Also, do I need to mention that we’re one of the rare country where Chruch and State are separated ? :) (no, America is not church and State separated. Cf the movie Spotlight, aaptation of a true story).

 “They even refuse to learn other languages”

Also Incorrect. We have no other choice but learn at least ONE forign Language. That is english. 

English is picked up in primary to Middle school with NO CHOICE. You want to pass ? You need to learn English. AND you also have to pick up a SECOND LANGUAGE that is also obligatory (either Spanish or German.). You have also in some places the choice to learn Latin. 

 Later on, depending on the highschool you go to, you can pick up another languages. I personnally picked Italian. 

Fair enough the teaching level is just TERRIBLE. I’ve personnaly learned more and became bilingual in english by watching cartoons and playing games with natives. BUT you are forced to learn a language in school.

Also, France has idiomas. Other antic languages from the country itself, such as Breton, Langue Doc, Alsacian that or taught in some places.  

Also, not to forget one point : Anglicism. France nowadays s FULL of anglicism. (word that were english but are used and frenchisized, if you will).

Also, did I mentionned that France is one of the 5 creators of Europe and that our current president, Emmanuel Macron is pro-europe ?

next one : 

“French autistic children are being shoved into freezers”

This, is called ‘Packing’. A medical technic that would use the hot/cold balance to try and treat anxiety attacks. 

Ok. So this is a real thing.I cannot deny it. BUT. Panixc attacks can also be controlled by cold. And even if it’s unfit for a lot of people, the most controversial part of this medical practice is violent because the patient is usually trashing. (fair enough tho :’)). But ‘freezers’ ? That sounds a little too big. Especially as the article someone sends is from 2011. It’s been 7 years ! This is NOT A COMmON USE IN HOSPITALS ANYMORE (My mom is a nurse who’ve orked with autistic children for 3 years)

Guys like Charco and all these lads are not an actuality anymore !

Medical practice have evolved since then ! Autistic Children are now accepted in schools and have a better surveillance/helps/more competent people to take care of them. 

“ a vast majority of autistic adults are unemployed becore of job discrimination”

There is a LOT of job discrimination. Last year ? I’v setn around 17 job application and only got one by the end of summer and in a shithole where I almost got punched by clients. 

The current year ? I’ve sent 20. No responses. 

YOUNG PEOPLE such as fresh diplomed folks OR students can’t find a job either because of their lack of experience. I want the FACTS. I want TESTIMONIES of the said enemployed autistic people. Because I want to compare. I’m more than not certain that if they’ve been receiving ‘job discrimination’, it’s because they do not have experience. And the rule in the world we live in ? “You need experience to have a job but you need a job to have experience.”. It’s sad, but it’s true. Being autistic, handicapped or simply a student does not make it worse or better. It’s everybody in the same pack. 

“This shit is happening because France is too blinded by nationalism to qustion their own government” 

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I’m sorry. this was immature but...really ?! REALLY ?!

Oh excuuuuuse me when it’s been 4 months that train workers are hitting a strike against one of the governments’ reforms (that I personnally don’t find that bad)

When some students couldn’t go to their univeristies to pass their exams because some assholes strikers blocked the access to the university.

when hospitals keeps striking in the streets for more funds, along with inhales : policemens, prison gardian, teachers, retired folks, the army, women,other students, factories workers, firefighters.

also, ever heard about ‘ElKomri’ law ? It’s a reform about work. yeah. That one ‘caused RIOT. To a point where we all thought that it was time for a new republic to rise. 

And again, I point you back yup to the second paragraph of this one sighted discussion. Nationalism here means that we are ready to kcik the shit out of anyone trying to shit on us. It’s how French folks work.

So please. People. Do your research. Don’t insult. Ask questions, DEBATE ! Check for FACTS. Live in your time. Compare the news. 

But stop being dumb :’)

[sissa-arrows]

You know what I live in France so boycotting France is hard (with my salary I can only afford local products or Chinese stuff and I’m already boycotting China) but I am so fucking happy about it.

It’s not even about just disrespecting us Muslims. It’s about the constant racism we face here. When they say that anyone who convert to Islam is an alarm and that the cops should start an investigation, when they say that “signs of radical Islam” must be reported and those signs are “having a beard, refusing to kiss men or women, going to the mosque on Friday, fasting, praying, learning Arabic...”. When they have people in the news saying “I am islamophobic and I’m not ashamed” or “Islamophobia is a right. People are allowed to be islamophobic” when that ex Muslim chick is invited every freaking day to lie and say “The word “love” is not in the Quran. Not even a single time. So it cannot be a religion of love and peace.” And when proven wrong with actual quotes from the Quran with the word love in them she keeps lying. When that same woman says cops should go in low incomes neighborhoods (aka where North Africans and Black people live aka the people labeled Muslims even when they are not) to shoot people with real bullets so “they won’t be tempted to be thugs anymore”. When people like Zemmour are still invited daily on TV even after saying ALL young Africans (so people perceived as Muslims in France) migrants are thugs, murderers and rapists. When he is still invited despite being condemned by justice multiple times for racism (especially Islamophobia) and homophobia but when a young North African guy told him “motherfucker” on a snapchat video Macron called Zemmour to check if he wasn’t traumatized after the insult. But when Zemmour told a black women (Hapsatou Sy) that she wasn’t a “child of the republic” and that her name was an insult to France” all of that on national TV Macron didn’t call her to check if she was okay. Macron doesn’t call any Muslim, any migrant, any Black person to check if they are okay after being insulted DAILY on national TV not Snapchat by that same Zemmour. It’s when Muslims are asked to be invisible but then at the same time we are told “I DID NOT SEE ANY MUSLIM AT THAT ANTI TERRORISM PROTEST”. It’s about a black representative suggesting a law against racism and discrimination, in which she listed types of racism and discrimination (islamophobia, antisemitism, homophobia...) and the rest of the representatives refused to sign it until islamophobia was taken off the list of racism and discrimination in that law. It’s about refusing to call the attack against the two hijabis in Paris a hate crime or a terror attack despite the fact they were told to go back to their country and were called “filthy Arabs”. It’s about Christian Black people being called “sleeping agent” “fake Christians” and “Muslims pretending to be Christians” because islamophobia is acceptable so they use it to hide their anti Black People racism. It’s about having a statue of Bugeaud the guy who killed millions of Algerians (he invented gas chambers by putting Algerian women and kids in caves and starting a fire at the entrance so they would choke and die because of the smoke) and on that statue writing “He was a good man who loved people” and “He pacified Algeria”. There’s also a street named after him in Paris. It’s about keeping the skulls of Muslims who died in Algeria (in the rest of Africa too but more specifically Algeria) to resist colonization as war trophies and to expose them in museums.

It’s not just about the disrespect it’s about the actual racism. Hell for some people it’s only about the actual racism and not about the disrespect at all.

Update!!!!

Since the French are adamant about using freedom of speech to disrespect Islam, Muslims, and our Prophet عليه الصلاة والسلام - let them hear us as we withhold our money out of love and honor for our religion!

Keep it up everyone - make sure you're sharing the brand names with your friends and family for the boycott to have a greater effect inshaAllah!

[icharchivist]

the presidental duel thing is on snapchat story. lepen is so full of herself

she’s the goddamn worst and I’m still so upset.

CW: Islamophobia, Homophobia, Antisemitism 

Among other things:

-All her sentences started with her trying to say Macron sucked, instead of defending her programs, it was all about “your program is bad because I say so”

-She wants to get out of Europe. Doing a Frexit like she says.

-She argues that the UK is doing better now that they are out of the UE

-She said that we should come back to Francs (our previous currency) because as the UK proved, they’re doing better now that they’re not using the Euro anymore (they… never used the Euro, Marine. Marine wake up.)

-She said that while it’s important we come back to Francs for “national pride”, “French people aren’t affected by it being Euro or Francs”. While guess what, yes we are, it’s our economy we’re talking about. 

-She basically dared to let us “try her” as a president

-She lied the whole time. The. whole time.

-She mentioned a Muslim guy who //allegedly// supported Macron and said Macron was trash over it because therefore he encouraged antisemitism, homophobia and misogyny. Which is big from a well known antisemitic person, who planned to go back on the gay marriage  and make law against LGBT+ people, and who is anti-abortion. And also which makes no sense whatsoever.

-She’s extremely racist and xenophobic and her anti-immigration politics are terrible, she wants to throw out anyone out of the country

-She kept bringing terrorist attacks and Muslims up in hateful ways, all the time, even on topic where it shouldn’t be mentioned. 

-When talking about the problems about education, the only thing she really had to say was that “we can’t allow people to wear veils in university and allowing so is making you terrible”

-Macron went in Algeria a few days prior to apologize about the Algeria War and called it a Crime Against Humanity, which it was and France was wrong okay. Lepen got angry at him and brought it up saying that putting the blame on France was a blasphemy and that you cannot say France is criminal if you want to represent it. (I will also add that it is a well known fact that her father, the founder of her party, tortured people during the Algeria War. He’s a war criminal. She can shut the fuck up.)

-To which Macron brought up what Lepen said a few days before: She argued that the Vel d’Hiv’s rafle (how, during WWII, under the Vichy Regime, Pétain ordered to get all the Jewish people living in the South, Men, Women and Children alike, and send them all in the Concentration camps, also taking into account the nazis only asked for the Men which resulted in countless of Women and Children being killed to be disposed of) - was not France’s fault and it wasn’t our responsability.

-To which Lepen replied that “France was in London during that time so it’s not our fault” (and guess what it fucking was. It’s not because some people of the Resistance was in London that it excuses what we did in FRANCE)

-She said that France used to be great but now we are “submissive” to Germany and the USA and that we have to go back to the glory days were we were admirated because we were France (so what time? When were we better? Because the time we were “world leaders” we weren’t that great. Marine. Marine shut the fuck up.)

-She kept insulting and interrupting Macron and then argued he was the one who kept insulting and interrupting her. 

-Taking into account that she stole 3 millions of Euro to the UE recently and refused to go to the Court when she was convocated about it, she called the Justice System in France to be not correct. To which Macron had to reply to her that if she went to her convocations maybe we would take her seriously.

-(he also said that “Sorry Miss Lepen, but France deserves so much better than you” and I’m thanksful for that. He’s not that great himself but look. Nothing is as bad as //Her//)

-She did this to interrupt Macron when he was talking about how there were problems in her party was and she was like “brrr raise the social network, everything’s bad”

-She mentioned that using our money to “heal immigrants” was to be irrespectful to any national pride and that we were failing French people, somehow. 

(and as a “fun” fact, there had been a terrorist attack a few days ago in Paris, a policeman was killed, but otherwise it was all. When the attack happened, the FN (her party) used it as a way to again, fuel their own agenda of hatred against all of this - until the policeman was buried and his husband made an ellogy for him, ending it by saying he loved his husband. To which JM Lepen, Marine’s Father (you know, the war criminal) said that it was truly shameful from France to honor “this kind of people”. that’s the kind of things she thinks as well. Let’s not forget that.)

And that’s just the things I noted down out of pure anger at some point because what the hell.

The Journalists themselves couldn’t take it anymore and when it was done, they mentioned it was the worst debate they’ve ever seen since the begining of the Vth Republic. Because instead of talking about solutions, it was all about attacks and nothing about real programs. They called Lepen childish and unprofessional. 

 And yet still, apparently still 40% of the people who watched the debate were convinced by her. 

I want to burn my eyes over how bad it was. It was seriously so cringeworthy. She’s arrogant, full of herself, hateful, encouraging to hate, dangerous, with no notion of economy (none of her plans makes sense on an economical standpoint) and it’s all about justifying her own hateful agenda. 

So ye that’s basically a summary of what I’ve been screaming about in French all night. It’s not that great. 

God I’m looking forward those elections to be over and I really hope we don’t screw up and elect //her//

[radicaldreamer017]

Fuck my dad. Such pigheaded fascist sympathizer (or just a fooled pigheaded idiot... which is more likely... but daaamn).

Now he said he won’t do anything if Macron is shit. That we all should have voted for Le Pen (because she’s so good and the first party of France, of the people) and that we deserve to suffer with Macron (conveniently ignoring that most of us voted against Le Pen and do not like Macron much and are ready to fight... and maybe manage to build a good opposition front that ISN’T the FN... and geez, how spiteful of him... to take pleasure in our possible future struggle when Macron’s laws might negatively impact him the most... I mean, WTF !?). That I’m a dumbass who believe anything she reads on the internet (how insulting coming from him, the guy who believes a lot of shit on tv without doing researches on his own).

And then, my sister who’s all “fuck you, got mine” about life. I didn’t think she would grow to become so selfish as years passed.

Gahhhhh ! 

I don’t know what to do anymore. It’s fights after fights, it gets nowhere, feelings are hurt, i’m always a bit frightful I could eventually get hit or worse by my dad (I know he’s capable of really losing it when he’s angry... and i got told twice I was going to be killed last year when he lost it, after/during my panic attack episodes)... and i’m stucked into this house because of crippling anxiety/depression (which mean, no self confidence, no job, no money... no way out).

I don’t know... Am I being unreasonable trying to convince him the FN is dangerous ? Should I just accept and stay silent whenever I hear stuff I find unacceptable ? For the greatest good of the family ? Just stay quiet about my own political and moral opinions, even when I hear something offensive (I mean, if i’m so mad about the FN voters, it’s not because of a divergence of opinions... it’s also because these people could put the alt-right in power in the future... and i see what it looks like with Trump in the US and it scares me) ? It’s a bit hard living with myself sometimes. I loathe lies/deception and injustice in general. And it was always hard for me to shut up in front of my dad (I know I wasn’t an easy kid, often called insolent, often told by my dad that other parents would have pulverized me and i should consider myself lucky to have them instead... any time my father hit me, I was often more likely to get angrier than to understand what good behavior is... truth be told, as i’m writing this, I feel like a fake, like a horrible daughter/person who is asking for undeserving sympathy and who probably deserved to get hit/slapped for my behavior). By letting my father believes in the FN, I feel like i’m losing him in some way. It hurts.

I just want to cry and escape somewhere. How long can I live like this ? With depression, anxiety, family issues, no friends/lover (because I have become a damn shut in), my shit self, no job or money, despair about the world/my country, no motivation for anything (unless it’s dumb escapism) etc...