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Arnaud Bertrand

Aug 24 • 17 tweets • 5 min read • Read on X

Quite an incredible move in French politics today that might reveal that we're in fact witnessing nothing less than a coup by Macron.

Let me explain 🧵

You'll remember that on the 7th of July France held elections that Macron lost badly, and which the left's "New Popular Front" won.

We're now 48 days afterwards and Macron and his government are still running the country, they've basically ignored the election results which is unprecedented in the history of the French 5th republic.

Normally, as is the rule set by precedents, Macron should have nominated a Prime Minister from the New Popular Front, the winners of the elections 🤷‍♂️

At first Macron argued that it wasn't convenient to change government right before the Olympics games and argued for an "Olympics truce".

Which is a bit bizarre because he's the one who decided to hold the elections right before the Olympics 🤦‍♂️

Anyhow we're now almost 2 weeks after the end of the Olympics and the situation is still the same so everyone is started to ask "wtf?"

Especially given that the New Popular Front has a Prime Minister ready: Lucie Castets, a senior public servant.

Now the excuse by Macron's camp is that they refuse a government with anyone from LFI ("France's unbowed", Mélenchon's party), the main party on the left and therefore the main party in the New Popular Front coalition (Lucie Castets is not from LFI but some ministers could be).

Macron has been demonizing LFI in a very similar fashion to the way Jeremy Corbyn was demonized in the UK, with accusations of antisemitism for their support of Gaza.

Except that unlike Corbyn, LFI doesn't bow - they're "France unbowed" after all - and fight back the accusations

Which brings me to what happened this morning, an incredible gamble by Mélenchon who asked an open question to Macron: "Say we committed to no LFI members in the government, would you nominate Lucie Castets Prime Minister?"

This forces Macron's hand: if he says "no", as Mélenchon himself wrote, it'd show that Macron's refusal to have LFI in the government is "just a pretext to deny the election results".

In effect if he says no, he openly admits that he just doesn't accept the election results.

Olivier Faure, who leads the Socialist party (the other big political force in the New Popular Front) backs up Mélenchon and says the "pretext of the presence of LFI ministers" isn't valid anymore.

In a way a New Popular Front government without LFI would in itself a denial of democracy because most voters voted for them *because* LFI was part of the coalition.

But this is also an act of political courage by Mélenchon and a way to put Macron in front of his contradictions.

We've already had some of Macron's lieutenants reply such as Benjamin Haddad (former spokesperson for Macron's party in the French parliament) who literally says that a New Popular Front gvt is unacceptable either way because it'd be bad for France.

They get to decide this? 🤔

Let's see what Macron ultimately does but we're truly witnessing something extraordinary that demonstrates how undemocratic France has become: the people voted and the result of their vote is so far simply rejected because those holding power don't like it...

I got this community note 👇 in the thread, which is NOT true. In the elections of 2022 - the prior ones - Macron's party arrived first without winning a majority yet Macron didn't hesitate to nominate a Prime Minister from his own party 🤷‍♂️

https://x.com/bayrou/status/1827763421699584433?t=Jiq1e9-SG2EB4V0b-4GaCA&s=19

Another extraordinary comment on this matter by François Bayrou, a former Macron minister and a famous centrist politician in France:

He literally says that the answer to Mélenchon's question is "of course no" (i.e. a New Popular Front government won't be accepted no matter what) because the program of the NFP is "very dangerous" for France.

There you have it, he said the quiet part out loud: folks who lost the elections refuse to leave power in favor of those who won it because they disagree with the policies the winners would enact, and they believe they're the ultimate judge for how the country should be governed.

Absolutely unreal.

https://x.com/bayrou/status/1827763421699584433?t=Jiq1e9-SG2EB4V0b-4GaCA&s=19

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More from @RnaudBertrand

Arnaud Bertrand

@RnaudBertrand

Sep 5

This is genuinely extraordinary: the latest ASPI Critical Technology Tracker is out and China is now in the lead for an incredible 57 out of the 64 key technologies of the future, i.e. 90% of the technologies.

The US leads the other 7.

A small 🧵 of what's in the report

First of all, what's ASPI (Australian Strategic Policy Institute)?

It's a quasi-governmental Australian defense think-tank that's largely funded by the Australian and US military-industrial complex.

In other words, they're very much NOT pro-China, quite the contrary...

And what's the Critical Technology Tracker?

ASPI basically identified the 64 critical technologies of the future (AI, biotechnology, EV batteries, etc.) and built a dataset to understand which countries and institutions produce the most innovative and high-impact research.

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Arnaud Bertrand

@RnaudBertrand

Aug 24

A synagogue was set on fire yesterday in France and that's an image of the suspect 👇

He's either the world's most idiotic Palestinian supporter or it's someone who really wanted to impress upon people that it was done by a Palestinian supporter... Only thing missing is a "I love Hamas" t-shirt for a perfect setup 😅

Anyhow French media don't even ask themselves the question, they're all shouting "look it was a Palestinian supporter"...

https://x.com/Mmk91466160/status/1827342592415039981

French Twitter doesn't buy it, at all. So many memes already 😅

https://x.com/Mmk91466160/status/1827342592415039981

Important precision: the synagogue itself was not set on fire. 2 cars parked in front of the synagogue (including one containing a gas canister) were set on fire.

Macron already called it a "terrorist attack" and an "antisemitic" act, before even apprehending the suspect and knowing about motives...lemonde.fr/societe/articl…

Read 4 tweets

Arnaud Bertrand

@RnaudBertrand

Aug 20

Something quite extraordinary is happening in Australia.

Over the past few weeks, many key authoritative figures - former PMs, top strategists, etc. - came out against AUKUS and US imperialism, in favor of Australian independence.

A small 🧵 listing the various key statements

https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1821827972057137180

First of, Paul Keating, former Prime Minister, describing AUKUS as the “worst deal in all history” and saying it will turn Australia into the 51st state of the US.

https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1821827972057137180

https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1772472565585563921

Malcolm Turnbull, another former PM, writing in The Guardian that it jeopardizes Australia's defense capability and sovereignty: "we now have to face the real prospect [...] of not having any Australian submarine capability at all."

https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1772472565585563921

Read 14 tweets

Arnaud Bertrand

@RnaudBertrand

Jul 8

That's incredible: Baidu last year set up a driverless taxi service in Wuhan and a few other places called "Carrot Run" (萝卜快跑), and the experiment is proving super popular with already 6 million rides completed with a fleet of just 1,000 cars.

The main reason is cost: without a driver and able to operate 24/7, it costs only 1/3rd of the price of a taxi or Uber. The cost paid by users is between RMB0.5 to RMB1.0 per km ($0.07 to $0.14) which is INSANELY cheap. With such a service, a drive between Boston and NYC (348 km) would set you back between $24 and $48, in your own private taxi!

Another added benefit is that they've set up the cars so that customers can sing karaoke or watch movies in the back (something you can't exactly do in a typical Uber). And safety-wise it's also proving much better than human drivers with no major accident in 100 million kilometers travelled.

So obviously a better experience from a consumer standpoint and it'll doubtlessly become the norm in a few years. Which of course raises questions with regards to jobs: millions if not tens of millions of people in China live off driving (taxis, delivery, etc.) so we're looking at quite a disruption if all those jobs get replaced by AI. And at the pace at which China moves, it's going to happen sooner rather than later.

Sources

mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzU2OT…
wap.xxsb.com/content/2024-0…

More details 👇 In Wuhan they're allowed to cover 40% of the city

https://x.com/Forward_2020/status/1810304127945109925?t=-iXGYV4ZKa-_3MANlVpaEQ&s=19

https://x.com/aiwen868/status/1810310935279800555?t=gO3vT3UJQiu4uwiBdUsJcw&s=19

That's how it looks like

https://x.com/aiwen868/status/1810310935279800555?t=gO3vT3UJQiu4uwiBdUsJcw&s=19

Read 4 tweets

Arnaud Bertrand

@RnaudBertrand

Jun 29

The most important event in the world yesterday wasn't the disastrous presidential debate in the US, but it was the 70th anniversary of the 5 Principles of Peaceful Coexistence happening in Beijing.

I was lucky enough to be attending in person.

A 🧵

First of all, what are the 5 principles of peaceful coexistence, and why do they matter?

The principles were first proposed by China for the purpose of the 1954 Sino-Indian Agreement, also called the Panchsheel Agreement.

They are:

1) mutual respect for each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty,
2) mutual non aggression,
3) mutual non-interference in each other's internal affairs,
4) equality and co-operation for mutual benefit
5) peaceful co-existence

Read 22 tweets

Arnaud Bertrand

@RnaudBertrand

Jun 21

Whenever I want to be reminded of what a wise politician sounds like, I listen to George Yeo, the former Foreign Minister of Singapore (he was Singaporean cabinet minister during 21 years!).

A small 🧵 with video extracts from a talk he made at @AsiaSocietyNY recently.

Here he explains why it's "troubling" that the US keeps making the remark that they won't become number 2, "because it suggests that the US will do everything it can to prevent China from being number 1".

All the more troubling because:
- "China is prepared to accept the US for what it is"
- "It is completely unrealistic" for the US to think it can "change China". He sees US aspirations to change China as "hope built on an illusion [which] can only lead to one outcome: to tragedy".
- "China doesn't want to be number one politically, [...] it doesn't want to take on the burden of being the global hegemon, the global policeman". So "in a multipolar world, the US can still be Primus Inter Pares, first among equals, because of the English languages, because of standards, because the US itself is a metasystem."

Here Yeo relates a powerful anecdote where the Secretary to Pope John Paul II wrote in a speech: "despite our diversity, we are one".

The Pope asked to replace the word "despite" with "because". Yeo interpreted it as meaning: "we are one only because we respect that each of us is unique, that each culture is unique, that each country is unique. If we want as a condition of the relationship that the other person should be like us, that's not a relationship, that's a dictatorship."

Yeo makes the point that today liberalism "has become doctrinaire, has become ideological", and that we need to recover the original liberal idea "of accepting differences and finding commonalities in our differences".