Our new president - President Emmanuel Macron!
En Marche! have won 10 out of the 11 overseas seats in early election voting - and the one they didn't win was because they kicked the candidate out.
Macron keeps winning!
LREM now have a huge parliamentary majority.
Macron has also reshuffled his cabinet to weaken MoDem elements seeking to undermine him: https://capx.co/emmanuel-macron-is-fina ... e-colours/
The President's approval ratings are currently at 64%!
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-franc ... SKBN19F0RC
jrjones9933
Veteran
Joined: 13 May 2011
Age: 55
Gender: Male
Posts: 13,144
Location: The end of the northwest passage
At some cost. I hope to see better from his foreign policy.
The condemnation online was swift and relentless. The US political scientist Laura Seay summarised the problem many had with Macron’s words in a series of tweets: “It is RICH for a French president to criticise Africa this way,” she said. “France’s colonial theory was called the ‘mission civilisatrice’, which purported to bring all the benefits of Frenchness to the continent. Part of the ‘mission’ was the institutionalisation of Catholicism as the official religion of French colonial territories in Africa.”
“We see all kinds of effects of the ‘mission civilisatrice’ in Francophone Africa today,” she continued, “like the church’s teaching against contraceptive use, which most African adherents take very seriously. Do women in Francophone Africa want to give birth to far more children than they can reasonably feed, clothe, and educate? I doubt most do.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... tence-over
_________________
"I find that the best way [to increase self-confidence] is to lie to yourself about who you are, what you've done, and where you're going." - Richard Ayoade
Macron's words have been taken completely out of context. The far-left (almost as much as the far-right) are angry about his victory, but nothing he said was offensive or particularly inaccurate, although there are a few simplifications and exaggerations.
So if we want a coherent response to Africa and African problems, we must develop a series of policies that are far more sophisticated than a simple Marshall plan and billions of dollars accumulated. Wherever the private sector can get involved, it has to get involved and we have to guide it. We are pleased with the World Bank in terms of critical infrastructure, education, health. There is a role for public funding and it is within this framework that we must act. It is our responsibility. In terms of security, we need to act in tandem with African regional organizations. This is what France does with Operation Barkhane in the Sahel, but more broadly through what we set up last Sunday with G5 Sahel: Development, security. Then there is a shared responsibility. The Marshall Plan you want for Africa is also a plan that will be supported by African governments and regional organizations. It is through rigorous governance, the fight against corruption, a struggle for good governance, a successful demographic transition. When countries still have 7 to 8 children per woman, you can decide to spend billions of euros, you will not stabilize anything. The plan of this transformation that we must lead together must take into account the African specificities by and with African Heads of State. It is a plan that must take into account our own commitments on all the projects that I have just mentioned, better associate public and private and it must be done in a much more regional, sometimes even national. This is the method that has been adopted and this is what we do wherever we are engaged
He's right that just throwing money at Africa isn't magically going to cause development (although in some cases it is necessary to reduce suffering). African countries (and other stalling countries around the world) need good governance. When they get good governance, Western nations need to support them. We need to reduce barriers to trade. We need to fight extremism, civil war, organised crime, and coups. We need to build critical infrastructure. We need to release people from the struggle for survival so that they can be more economically productive (not to mention happier!), and part of that is providing family planning services so that women can leave the home and get jobs rather than caring for their own children. People need security, freedom, and opportunity.
Aid is important, but suffers from diminishing returns. In countries with bad governance, aid is often squandered or outright stolen. We need it to deal with crises, and for people who have very little hope (particularly in poor countries which have been stagnating or in recession for decades), but it is far from our most powerful tool and it can't do the job on its own.
Western Europe after the war had relatively good governance. There weren't many civil wars (Spain didn't get Marshall money) and no coups as far as I know. Most countries had significant coastlines to allow for international trade, and those that didn't had rich neighbours. Unfortunately those conditions do not exist in much of Africa. That's largely because of the stupid colonial borders, but at this point those can't be changed much.
What a surprise! Macron is a corporate shill!
http://www.france24.com/en/20170223-france-emmanuel-macron-outlines-economic-plans-corporate-taxes-jobs-presidential-election
I see right through Macron. He is a French version of Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. He is a product of corporate "liberalism". I'm talking about the stuff that comes out of the Democratic Party and the so-called "liberal media".
Corporate Liberalism: We want to fight against oppression ... but not when it scares away our sponsors.
Whatever. I'm not mad. Le Pen exists for a reason. Right-wing populism tends to emerge in countries that are on the verge of collapse. When people start to see through the corporate media ... the wealthy create false "alternatives". Thus, the white working class becomes loyal again. Down boy!
Le Pen lost, but she is still very popular. This is a sign. Right-populism only emerges when the elites are desperately trying to supress left-populism. That left-populism was coming from Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Le Pen was created to supress Mélenchon. Similarly, Trump was supported by people who wanted to lure Average Joe away from Sanders.
It's only a matter of time. The propaganda machine is coming apart. We should be optimistic.
_________________
Synthetic carbo-polymers got em through man. They got em through mouse. They got through, and we're gonna get out.
-Roostre
READ THIS -> https://represent.us/