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Arnaud Bertrand Profile picture
@RnaudBertrand
Jun 13 • 24 tweets • 8 min read • Read on X
These have undoubtedly been the wildest 72 hours in French politics in my lifetime. Pretty incredible stuff.

A 🧵
So after losing big time in the EU elections to Le Pen's Rassemblement National (RN), Macron decided to dissolve the National Assembly, calling the French to elect new MPs on the 30th of June 👇
This started what can only be called a movement of total panic throughout the French political class, because parties only have until this weekend to present candidates, and therefore decide on a strategy, who to ally with, etc.
The left got their shit together fairly fast, almost immediately announcing the creation of a "Popular Front" that gathers all the left-wing parties 👇
Hilariously, Raphael Glucksmann, the head candidate of the Socialist Party for the EU elections, tried to prevent the alliance by going on TV to list some ridiculous pre-conditions for it, but literally no-one listened to him and they went forward with it.
Many memes on Glucksmann effectively putsching himself out of the French left (he was never actually on the left anyhow)...
It's on the right that things really started to go wild after Éric Ciotti, the president of Les Républicains, the party of Chirac and Sarkozy, announced that they would do an alliance with Le Pen
Almost immediately top officials in his own party started saying that Ciotti was speaking in his own name only and said he needed to resign from the party's presidency.
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Ciotti reacted by literally shutting down party headquarters to prevent his destitution. This is Aurélien Pradié, a Républicain MP in front of the closed doors of the headquarters saying they'll get emergency services to break open the door for them 😅
So many memes around this on French twitter 😅
Finally, the general secretary of the party @AnnieGenevard, who had spare keys, got to the party headquarters and managed to open the doors.
The "political desk" ("bureau politique") of Les Républicains announces that they've met, decided to fire Ciotti as President of the party and that he is not a member of Les Républicains anymore.
Ciotti begs to differ and says that the meeting that fired him didn't conform with the rules of the party so he in fact "is and remains president of [the party]"...
The infighting in Les Républicains continues, it's still completely unclear who actually manages the party at this stage and whether they'll ally with Le Pen. Ciotti claims that 80 Républicain MPs are with him and ready to campaign under Le Pen's banner...
One thing is sure though, Ciotti still controls Les Républicains' twitter account: "The President of the Républicains is and will remain Éric Ciotti."
He also has the Vice-President of the party @GuilhemCarayon on his side: "With Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, we share 90-95% of the same ideas."

All in all, the party seems extremely divided and is imploding in real time...
Further right, things are pretty wild too. Marion Maréchal (granddaughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen who had joined Zemmour instead of her family), announces on live TV that she wants to ally with the RN, next to a Zemmour whom apparently hadn't been consulted.
Later that day, Marion Maréchal announces that she met with the RN and heavily hints that the condition they set for an alliance is to get rid of Zemmour... Bear in mind that the party Reconquête that Maréchal and Zemmour are part of was founded by Zemmour
Zemmour goes on TV and calls Marion Maréchal's behavior "the world record of betrayals" and says she's surrounded by a team of "betrayal professionals"
Zemmour decided to not to go for an alliance and to present his own candidates. Marion Maréchal calls it "a triple mistake" and calls on everyone to vote for those candidates that did ally with the RN.

In short Reconquête just imploded...
Meanwhile Macron shoots at the newly formed "Popular Front", essentially saying that those who join it are antisemites🤦 Because LFI (Mélenchon's party) campaigned a lot for Palestinians so obviously that makes them and everyone with them antisemites...
In other wild news, Alain Finkielkraut, one of France's foremost Jewish intellectuals says he might be "obliged" to vote for Le Pen in order "to block antisemitism".

As a reminder Le Pen's party was co-founded by Pierre Bousquet, a former Waffen-SS... Image
There you go, 72 hours in France's political life... And that's not even half of it!

No doubt that this circus show will continue for the next 2 weeks until the elections. It's widely entertaining but obviously shows just how dysfunctional and lost France is right now...
Interesting late addition to the thread on what voters actually want.

Huge majority of voters on the left favorable to the "popular front" alliance (97% of LFI voters want it, as well as 86% of Socialist voters and 77% of Greens)

Les Républicains voters about half split on an alliance with Le Pen (53% agree so presumably 47% disagree).

Overwhelming support among Zemmour voters for an alliance with Le Pen (89% want it) so it looks like Marion Maréchal represents voters' will more than Zemmour with her move.Image

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More from @RnaudBertrand

Arnaud Bertrand Profile picture
Nov 3
I'm genuinely amazed that some places like this still exist in China.

On our drive to Chongqing airport back from SanXingDui we decided to check midway a spot called "Qian Fo Zhai" ("Thousand Buddhas village") in an area named Anyui. And it turns out to be an entire hill with some amazing Tang and Song dynasty grotto carvings that are completely free to access, with virtually no tourists.

I thought that at this stage most of those had been organized in touristic attractions, similar to Dazu, Mogao or Longmen grottoes but no, turns out you obviously have a number of those which are still unorganized, which is quite an amazing experience. Probably won't remain the case for long, if only for purposes of protecting the artifacts.
And at the bottom of the hill we just stumbled upon a Buddhist monastery and listened to the monks singing a beautiful prayer 🙏
Genuinely incredible song actually, although I'll admit I have a soft spot for liturgical music, not everyone enjoys it.
Read 6 tweets
Arnaud Bertrand Profile picture
Nov 2
Last full day of our 2-week Sichuan road-trip and we end it on a high point: a visit of SanXinDui, one of the greatest archeological discoveries of all times, anywhere in the world.

Unfortunately SanXinDui is bizarrely unknown in the West, even though it ranks on par with things like the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb or the Terracotta army in Xi'an.

SanXinDui used to be the capital of China's ancient Shu kingdom which ruled here between 1,700BC and 1,200BC so everything in the museum is 3,000 to 4,000 years old.
The artifacts found here - and they uncovered an incredible 17,000 objects already - are beyond extraordinary, almost otherworldly, revealing a unique culture unlike anything that had been found in China before. And a culture much more advanced for that time period of Chinese history than had been assumed before.

Here you can see 4 pieces we just saw in the museum:
- A monumental bronze mask in pure SanXinDui style, with protruding eyes that archeologists believe symbolizes a far-sighted leader or shaman
- A typical SanXinDui mask with a gold plated mask on top of it
- A monumental 4m tall bronze "tree" with dragons for its roots and birds with 9 fruits and birds on its branches
- A wheel with 5 beams thought to represent the sun

More artefacts we saw in the museum in the 🧵 below 👇Image
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You can see many, many bronze masks, all with similar features but all unique Image
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You also have more complete statues like this guy who looks like a 4,000 years old weightlifter 😊 Image
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Read 16 tweets
Arnaud Bertrand Profile picture
Oct 30
Genuinely incredible experience in China today, straight out of a movie.
So we're in E Mei Shan in Sichuan, one of the 4 sacred Buddhist mountains in China, and I was told by my friend @ZhaiXiang5 of this temple called "Sacred Water Temple" that's hidden from tourists and especially beautiful.

We had high expectations but we still were blown away, this place is truly the hidden gem of E Mei Shan, incredibly charming!

This is us arriving at the place 👇 (the rest in the 🧵)
Look how amazingly pretty the inside of the temple is!
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The temple is inhabited by a community of about 20 Buddhist nuns. We were lucky enough to witness their afternoon prayers.
Read 9 tweets
Arnaud Bertrand Profile picture
Oct 24
Status update: having a hotpot in a bomb shelter, served by robots. Only in Chongqing 😅
For the folks confused about what's happening: Chongqing has thousands of bomb shelters from the time the Japanese were bombing the city when the government was here.

Many of these shelters are today converted into shops or restaurants.
Look at the sheer size of this place!
Read 4 tweets
Arnaud Bertrand Profile picture
Oct 22
Very special dinner tonight in Chongqing in Dadong, one of the most luxury restaurant brands in China (especially famous for its duck).

I went through the whole menu for you 👇 so you can see how beautiful their dishes are.

I'll also post all the dishes we eat one by one as a 🧵 below as we receive them.
To start with, the duck! Image
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And that's the rest of the duck: the parts they didn't use for the pancakes they fried and served it like this Image
Read 13 tweets
Arnaud Bertrand Profile picture
Sep 27
A lot of sensationalist stuff gets written on China, and most of it is horsesh*t.

But rarely, some of it is true.

This is the story of a project on which 60,000 Chinese soldiers worked during 18 years in complete secrecy. It was simply known as the "816 project".

A 🧵 Image
I came across it yesterday, when looking for spots to visit around Chongqing.

About 150km East of the city, I noticed a place in the middle of the countryside simply called "816 Nuclear Military Plant".

My curiosity piqued, I looked into it and could barely believe it. Image
The project started in the 1960s, during the so-called Sino-Soviet split.

At the time, China had a problem: it had jointly developed its nuclear program with the Soviet Union and it urgently needed to have its own independent capabilities, developed in secure facilities.
Read 13 tweets

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