Archive for Emmanuel Macron
Palestine
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Travel with tags Emmanuel Macron, European Greens, France, French politics, French Republic, Gaza war, Geneva Conventions, genocide, Israeli government, Le Monde, Occupied Palestinian Territory, Palestine, two-state solution, United Nations, United Nations General Assembly, US politics, USA, war crimes on September 22, 2025 by xi'an
non, pour être libre, il ne faut être ni craint, ni puissant…
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures with tags Cesare Borgia, Emmanuel Macron, Federico Faruffini, Firenze, French politics, French State, International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Musei Civici di Pavia, Nicolas Machiavel, Pavia, philosophy, rearmament, Russian invasion, unilateral nuclear disarmament on August 14, 2025 by xi'an
The French president Emmanuel Macron gave a talk on 14 July to the French armies (discours aux Armées) calling for an increased military budget, with the fundamentally flawed argument that, to be free, one must be feared, and that to be feared, one must be powerful. Which sounds at best as a sophism and at worst as a contradiction of terms, as it leads to the conclusion that only tyrants can be free… I wonder where the president got the inspiration for this terrible sequence, in Machiavelli maybe since he wrote his master thesis on the Florentine political philosopher. As for the relevance of rearmament, I also deem the argument similarly flawed. (Nuclear disarmament alone would scrimp €5 billion to €6 billion of the French State yearly budget.)
Thalys static
Posted in Kids, Mountains, pictures, Travel, Wines with tags 7th privaCI workshop, agricultural subsidies, agriculture, Brussel, Emmanuel Macron, EU's common agricultural policy, Europe Parliament, European Parliement, FNSEA, French politics, Gare du Nord, intensive agriculture, lobby, métro static, Thalys on June 27, 2025 by xi'an
[When returning from Brussels, after the privaCI workshop, I happened to sit in the Thalys train to Paris, next to three French (?) lobbyists (??) discussing very loudly about the specifics of their trade, apparently acting for the main agriculture union FNSEA (???) model of industrial and intensive agriculture at the European Commission or Parliement in Brussels. Annoyingly so, making me regret my bargain first class ticket. Here are a few sentences from one of their phone calls:]
“T’installes un éleveur de poules c’est deux cent milles euros, un éleveur de porcs c’est un million, c’est pas pareil. Tu peux installer un éleveur de poules en trois mois !”
…
“Le président de la République [Emmanuel Macron] a signé, son discours souligne l’importance du modèle de la CEPR [contrats de plan État-Région], c’est plié, je ne vois pas ce qu’on peut faire de plus!”
Choose France for Science (?)
Posted in Statistics with tags @ScientistTrump, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Choose France, CNRS, Emmanuel Macron, French politics, French universities, Libé, Trump administration, UN universities, US politics on May 15, 2025 by xi'an
and it only gets worse and worse and … [verbatim]
Posted in Books, pictures with tags 06 January 2021, Agent Orange, baby Trump, bombing, democracy, dictature, Donald Trump, drawing, elections, Emmanuel Macron, European Commission, European Union, foreign policy, JD Vance, Kyiv, riots, Russian invasion, Solidarity with Ukraine, Ukraine, US Capitol, verbatim, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, war crimes, war economy on March 2, 2025 by xi'an
[Extracts from DT’s unhinged declarations on 19 Feb about Ukraine:]
“But today I heard: ‘Oh, well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it three years. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”
“A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left. We have a situation where we haven’t had elections in Ukraine. Well, we have martial law, essentially martial law in Ukraine, where the leader in Ukraine, I mean, I hate to say it, but he’s down at 4% approval rating and where a country has been blown to smithereens. You got most of the cities are laying on their sides.”
“Russia does not intend to destroy Kyiv, if they had wanted to, they would have done it. Russia is capable of wiping out Ukrainian cities 100%, including Kyiv, but right now, they are only attacking at 20%.”
“Russia wants to do something. They want to stop the savage barbarianism [sic].”
[And more during the joint session with Emmanuel Macron, on 24 Feb.]
“I don’t use those words lightly [when asked whether or not Putin is a dictator], we’ll see how it all works out.”
“The European Union was formed in order to screw the United States. That’s the purpose of it, and they’ve done a good job of it.”
[With the newspeak winner about the January 6 rioters’ pardon]
“I pardoned J6 people who were assaulted by our government. They didn’t assault. They were assaulted, and what I did was a great thing for humanity.”
[All these quotes were recorded before the 28 Feb deliberate ambush of President Zelenskyy set by the boned spurred Agent Orange and his hillbilly Iago, reaching the all-times nadir of US international relations…]
