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Ouch! Some very topical digs at French President François Hollande here which, like an episode of Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell, probably means nothing if you haven’t watched the news in the last couple of weeks. The bigger context involves a bit more history though.
So what’s all this shouting then?
One of M. Hollande’s measures, supposed to save France from stagnation, is to radically reorganise it’s regions, cutting them from 22 to 14 13 (the exact plan has been a little...ah...flexible), thereby saving lots of money...maybe. Hollande quotes a €15 billion saving, but you have to wonder how they factor in the long arguments about which cities will be the new administrative centres, no doubt resulting in some compromise solutions where a totally new city gets the nod.
Another possible problem with this idea is that many quintessentially French products are linked to existing regions which will cease to exist. In strictly practical terms this doesn’t really matter much, but in marketing terms it’s a little odd.
It has also seemed desperately arbitrary at times. First Champagne-Ardenne was linked with Lorraine and Alsace, then only with Picardie and now it’s back with Lorraine and Alsace. Hollande’s former partner, Minister for Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy Ségolène Royal (and also President of the Poitou-Charentes Regional Council) looked like she was going to get her region merged with Pays de la Loire, but Hollande did a sudden about-turn and instead merged it with Centre and Limousin. Once again, this was changed to merger with Limousin and Aquitaine, leaving Pays de la Loire as one of the unchanged regions.
And this is the source of the demonstration above. When the then Duchy of Brittany was united with the Kingdom of France in 1532 to become the Province of Brittany it was about 20% bigger than it is today since it also included the neighbouring départment of Loire-Atlantique. Some Bretons have been lobbying for its return ever since it was removed in 1956 to form the economic centre of the new region of Pays de la Loire. Part of the rationale for its removal was the rivalry between the cities of Resnn · Roazhon · Rennes (capital of the region of Brittany) and Naunnt · Naoned · Nantes resulting in Nantes getting its very own region. In the messy politics of the post-war 4th Republic (more than one head of government lasted only 1 day in office) I haven’t been able to figure out who was responsible for this plan, but it does bear a compelling resemblence to Marshal Pétain’s Région de Rennes decreed in 1941 during the Vichy regime.
Hence the portrayal of François Hollande as Marshal Pétain, once again denying Brittany its territorial integrity.
Merci pour ce moment
- Telegraph: Valérie Trierweiler 'richer than Hollande' after memoir
- Guardian: Hollande says claim he called poor 'toothless' was blow to his whole life
- Les Inrocks: “Merci pour ce moment”: on a lu le livre de Valérie Trierweiler
- Libé: «Merci pour ce moment» de Trierweiler, le livre qui n'intéresse personne (officiellement)
And the “toothless” bit? Hollande‘s most recent partner, former political journalist Valérie Trierweiler, who departed after (unusually for France) his affair with an actress appeared in the media, has published an extremely successful and damaging account of her experiences as First Lady, Merci pour ce moment (“Thanks for this moment”). In it she claimed that Hollande, despite being a socialist, had no love or respect for the poor, calling them “the toothless” in private and being proud of his wit in doing so. Who’s to say how much of this is true—Le Nouvel Observateur called it a “300-page crime of passion”—but what’s said can’t be unsaid and with Hollande’s popularity at a record low (13%) the public are more than ready to believe it.
So that leaves us with “illiterate”. This comes from a recent couac (“squawk” i.e. “gaff”) from the new Minister of Economy, Industrial Renewal and Information Technology and former Rothschild investment banker, Emmanuel Macron. In trying to argue for the difficulties of female employees of the Breton abbattoir Gad which was going into receivership, he said many of them were illiterate and didn’t have driving licences. He might’ve meant well but it certainly did not go down well.
French Socialism does seem to be having some problems connecting with the people at the moment. Perhaps it’s not surprising then that the National Front is doing so well. They gained two seats in the Senate today—their very first appearance in that house.
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As amply parodied by Monty Python, it’s often hard to keep up with the splintering and renaming of organisations in the Middle East, but it’s also been interesting of late to try and keep up with the naming in our own media. The struggle for control of meaning never ends. So what’re we supposed to call these guys now? ISIS? IS? ISIL?
(The) Islamic State · الدولة الإسلامية · ad-Dawlah l-ʾIslāmiyyah
This is what they officially call themselves now. Straightforward and to-the-point branding that highlights their view that they’re the go-to guys for Islam. And that’s probably exactly why politicians in the west are starting to avoid using the term—it all sounds a bit too legitimising.
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Syria) · الدولة الإسلامية في العراق والشام · ad-Dawlah l-ʾIslāmiyyah fil-‘Irāq wash-Shām
This was their name prior to 29 June 2014. An accurate geographical definition perhaps, but it ultimately didn’t suit their goal of a worldwide caliphate. This name gives rise to the two acronyms you hear most often in the English language media—ISIS and ISIL.
ISIS vs ISIL
Why two acronyms? Because the Arabic name الشام ash-Shām is a little ambiguous. In everyday speech it can refer to Damascus (دمشق Dimashq) or to Syria (سورية / سوريا Sūriyā / Sūrīyah) or to the historical region of Greater Syria which we might call the Levant.
So it becomes a point of contention which translation you choose: ISIL implies a larger area and a larger threat; ISIS implies a more closely defined (but still innaccurate) area and co-incides with the name of a pagan goddess. ISIS seemed to hold sway for a long time, but Barak Obama seems to have settled firmly on ISIL and Australian politicians seem to be following suit. It’s hard to see which of these is ‘better’ or why, but obviously someone somewhere has decided there’s something about ISIL. Personally I found the name ISIS hard to take seriously because it always made me think of Sterling Archer.
Another odd coincidence that occurred to me recently is that Isil is the name for the Moon in J. R. R. Tolkien’s contructed Elvish language Quenya (Ithil in Sindarin).
And then there’s the question of pronunciation. I’ve mostly heard /ˈaɪsəl/ (igh-suhl), but today I heard an American journalist on the radio call it /ˈɪsəl/ (iss-suhl).
But wait, there is apparently yet another choice.
Dāʿesh · داعش
Although they had previously been calling it L’État islamique, in the last couple of weeks the French government has started using the term Daech. This is simply the Arabic version of the ISIL acronym (the letters Dāl, ʾAlif, ʿAyn and Šīn), but it’s largely been used by competing rebel groups and ISIL/Da‘esh themselves consider it so derogatory that its use will win you 70 lashes.
Unfortunately every time I hear it I just think of this.
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At first I thought the news had made a big boo-boo, then I decided it might be just Google Earth, but no, it’s all of Google. Yes, technically Kiritimati (Christmas Island) marked here is indeed part of the Independent and Sovereign Republic of Kiribati and even makes up 70% of its land mass, but it is also 3,300 km away from the capital and on the extreme eastern edge of the territory. Not exactly central.
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Late Night Live, 18 August 2014: Pope Francis and the nuns Are American nuns taking the rap for the Vatican's apparent new image of promoting social and economic justice over conservative doctrine?
WMA audio at the link above. |
This was quite interesting! Pope Francis is (relatively) progressive in some ways, but gender isn’t one of them.
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A glimpse of how the civilised world is living. In unremarkable story about tax assessments we encounter an unremarkable couple.
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Today’s odd expression from the French News is guet-apens.
We can try to dissect and analyse this, but since apens is only used in this one expression we won’t get too far with that bit.
So what about guet? From my news-skewed vocabulary the related word that springs to mind is guetteur “lookout”, usually used in relation to suburban drug dealing. The guetteur is the guy in the street who you approach with your money. He then goes off somewhere and comes back with your deal. That way the real dealers don’t do the risky part and the guetteur only ever has a limited amount of cash or drugs on him.
It’s tempting for an English speaker to see some kind of pun here (get-eur) since he gets you your drugs, but it’s just one of those co-incidences.
The verb it comes from, guetter, means to watch (intently) or to be on the lookout for something, which gets us near the meaning but not quite there.
In fact a guet-apens is an ambush and looks like legalese.
guet > aguet > Old French agais (> agaitier) “(careful) watch; ruse, fraud; trap, ambush; sentinel”
apens > appensé “pre-meditated” (> appenser “to form a plan”)
And the news story...
Last night in Paris, shortly after 9 pm a convoy of 11 vehicles, one of them containing a Saudi prince, left the hotel George V near the Champs Élysées heading for Bourget airport. They were ambushed at the entrance to the Ring Road by between 5 and 8 masked and heavily armed men in high-powered cars. They got away with €250,000 and some private documents in a professional commando operation in which no shots were fired. The Saudi embassy stated there were no sensitive documents involved, but declined to identify the prince involved in the attack.
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Babette Francis & Robert Spencer
I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that the wingnut founder of Women Who Want to be Wombats (now known as the Endeavour Forum) and co-organiser of the upcoming World Congress of Families forum (to be held in Glen Iris at the end of the month) would be pals with Robert Spencer, the dubious (to say the least) author of the website Jihad Watch.
I can’t say I totally disagree with Robert—I wouldn’t recommend taking up Islam, but then, based on some of the vile, immoral stuff in the Bible, I wouldn’t recommend becoming a Christian either! And that’s where we differ...oh and the devoting-his-life-to-whipping-up-hatred thing. I’m not into that so much either.
See also: World Congress of Families @ joemygod
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So, Luc Besson was given quite a bit of time on the French News today to spruik his latest, somewhat silly, film Lucy. We were told in the introduction that not only was it 100% French, 100% Besson but that it was un carton aux États Unis “a (piece of) cardboard in the US”. Now I did, more or less, know what they meant by this strange expression, but I’d forgotten the details so I found myself in that position, familiar to anyone who has learnt another language, of looking something up knowing you’ve done it multiple times before. In the hope that I’ll remember this time I’m going to record the logic of it here.
My 1986 Collins Robert dictionary is fairly unhelpful..
carton [kaʁtɔ̃] 1 nm (a) (matière) cardboard.…(b) (boîte) (carboard) box, carton (US); (contenu) boxful; (cartable) (school)bag, satchel.…(c) (cible) target. faire un ~ (à la fête) to have a go at the rifle range; (* : sur l’ennemi) to take a potshot* (sur at); faire un bon ~ to make a good score, do a good shot (Brit).(d) (Peinture) sketch; (Géog) inset map; [tapisserie, mosaïque] cartoon.(e) (carte) card. ~ d’invitation invitation card.2: … (Ftbl) carton jaune yellow card; carton rouge red card …
French Wiktionary is much more helpful with the simple definition…
- Success
…but that doesn’t really tell you why it is so or convey the flavour of the expression. It seems clear that the origin of this meaning for the word is the use of cardboard targets with a slight transference from that object to what you do to it, i.e. a hit.
Before you’re tempted to use this (possibly) new-found piece of vocab willy-nilly, it’s worth pointing out that a hit record however is not un carton but un tube, whose basic meaning is much like the English word. I don’t know if this has any relation to the Surferese tubular, but it may have something to do with revving the cylinders of a car “full bore” (marcher à pleins tubes) or giving someone a buzz on the telling bone (donner un coup de tube à qn).
And as for the movie? Margaret loved it (4 stars); David not so much (3½ stars).
DAVID: …The dazzling photography and flashy effects channel such disparate movies as 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY and THE TREE OF LIFE. Kubrick and Malick, plus references to Besson's own NIKITA - what a combination!! LUCY is sheer, unadulterated, rubbish - but it's frequently enjoyable and just occasionally thought-provoking rubbish.
Margaret?MARGARET: I took it all very seriously, David.
DAVID: You did? Okay.
MARGARET: … It's stupendously stupid in a lot of ways.
DAVID: Absolutely.
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Poles #EatApples to annoy PutinOn Wednesday, Russia announced a ban on some fruit and vegetable imports - including apples - from Poland "for sanitary reasons". Polish food producers say the ban is politically motivated as a response to EU sanctions, a claim Russia denies. In response, Poles have been showing their support for local farmers by campaigning on social media. It started on Twitter when the journalist Grzegorz Nawacki shared an image of himself eating an apple and used the hashtag #jedzjabłka, which means "eat apples." |
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Full story at BBC News |
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