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French election: Macron defeats Le Pen

bbc.com

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Re: French election: Macron defeats Le Pen

#201

Post by petre »

ttepasse wrote: post #198
petre wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Austria Hungary has failed. The Soviet Union has failed even though everybody in it was speaking Russian, which is not the case with the EU. The EU will fail if it continues like this, with massive centralization of power. The difference is that unlike Austria Hungary and the USSR, it does not have a standing army to back its power and member states will leave when economic crisis hits and it's no longer in their bes…

Germany was build out of different german speaking principalities. Germany was problematic in the 20th century but the problems were against its neighbours, not within. And then there are those 13 ex-colonies, now 50, which dared to want an ever closer union. They had a civil war, yes, but since then secession seems to out of the picture.

They were already speaking German and Otto von Bismarck and did lend them a bit of a helping hand, pissing off the French in the process, which pretty much led to both world wars.

Re: French election: Macron defeats Le Pen

#202

Post by Faaak »

polotics wrote: post #147
Faaak wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in France near the Swiss-France border and all this talk about how more borders will reduce terrorism and immigration is completely bullshit. I cross every day the border. Twice a week, I cross another border which is meant to be closed from 19h to 6h (many small borders near the FR-CH do that). There is a simply locked barrier. Nothing more. This has been here for 25+ years. Of course, I've crossed "illegally…

The Geneva border is under heavy drone surveillance. Try crossing with an AK on your back.

This is completely false.

Re: French election: Macron defeats Le Pen

#203

Post by mrout »

AlexeyBrin wrote: post #190
mrout wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virtually every educated person in Europe speaks English.

Maybe you meant every young, as in under 40, educated person in Europe speaks English. Plenty of educated people in Eastern Europe speak/read French and Russian. Until the '90s French was the main foreign language taught in countries like Romania, Bulgaria and most countries under Soviet influence. English was introduced later, usually after the fall of the Soviet Union.

I did mean educated person under 40, yeah. sorry.

Re: French election: Macron defeats Le Pen

#204

Post by AnimalMuppet »

mtgx wrote: post #49
orf wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree with the downvotes you are receiving, you make some good overall points (but also some bad ones). Nothing is dead until it is entirely dead, and the EU idea still runs strong in people. Things need to change, as Brexit and the recent problems faced by the union have shown. Now it's down to the time to reform. I don't think Macron is choosing the status quo though, hes as much as a political outsider as…

What exactly "needs to change"? When I see people complain about the EU it's usually about "the EU taking their sovereignty and imposing stuff on them". So if "things are going to change" that means the EU would have to become less like the U.S. (a federal entity), and more like an aggregate of wildly different cultures and regulations (so more like the pre-EU Europe). Is that really a good thing? And do things "need…

> What exactly "needs to change"?

The EU feels out of touch, unresponsive, "undemocratic". Whether it is or not isn't the issue; it feels that way to too many people. Many people therefore feel very little emotional affinity with the EU. If the EU is going to survive, that needs to change, because it opens the door to anti-EU populists in several countries. If enough win, the EU could become a skeleton of what it is now.

Re: French election: Macron defeats Le Pen

#206

Post by ethelward »

angry-hacker wrote: post #183
sparkling wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to explain why this is "terrifying"?

It's not. A lot of young people voted for Le Pen. People are sick and tired of Marxists destroying their countries. It's obvious they just won some time but big changes are coming.

Marxists in France? Do you have any idea what you're talking about?

Re: French election: Macron defeats Le Pen

#207

Post by song »

lindbergh wrote: post #196
song wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as someone who has had companies in various countries (Japan, China, Hong Kong and France). The paperwork and complexities in France are by far the worst. Even China with it's love of red tape is at least relatively well organized and not to difficult to navigate. In France, you get to deal with organizations like the RSI and URSSAF which are incredibly incompetent, frequently make mistake, do not have phone…

Interesting. Out of curiosity, why then did you chose France over any other EU country to have your company?

Only because I lived there at the time.

Re: French election: Macron defeats Le Pen

#208

Post by glandium »

pavlov wrote: post #84
YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 wrote: post #37

I'm sure we're about to get blown back by the storm of articles analysing how institutional misogyny played a part in a presidential election that a woman lost ... not. Not sure if this is HN material, though.

If Macron (or his campaign) had talked about Le Pen the same way Trump's troops did about Clinton, you would have a point. But I can't remember seeing any of that. (Compare to the Republican National Convention last year where sexist merchandise insulting Clinton was everywhere. One t-shirt read: "KFC Hillary special: 2 fat thighs. 2 small breasts. Left wing.")

Can't reply to the GP which is now flagged, but somehow, he was right, it happened...

https://twitter.com/JulianAssange/status/861764728753926144

I'm speechless.

Re: French election: Macron defeats Le Pen

#209

Post by FoeNyx »

LyndsySimon wrote: post #182
Faaak wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you imagine a wall all around France ‽ As for the second par of your argument, I don't know the context but to me it seems more of a correlation than a causation.

Yeah, imagine France building a wall! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maginot_Line

And let's not forget the infamous Atlantic Wall ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Wall

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