Jeez, the Bikini Atoll fukkery in Marshall didnât last nowhere near that long. Unfortunately, that whole area in the Pacific was cursed by its remoteness. Too far away for people in Paris or Washington to give a fukk about it.
The France Thread: Oui Oui, Bonbons and all that bad stuff đ«đ·
Jeez, the Bikini Atoll fukkery in Marshall didnât last nowhere near that long. Unfortunately, that whole area in the Pacific was cursed by its remoteness. Too far away for people in Paris or Washington to give a fukk about it.
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Cole Cash
They took a hammer and sickle to my back
Unrelated but PSG went out like some hoes. I also think that Macron put himself in a unwinnable situation even if he wins with his neoliberal bullshyt
Not too bad of a CL run though. Beating Barça and Bayern in a row is still a good feat and they are in the final 4 two years in a row so it's not that bad. Not too bad !
Anyway, yeah Macron has really up the ante and turned very right lately. I would say he was always neo liberal but at first there was a sensibility to some leftist ideas but this has totally disappeared. So much that we're back to the war on drugs rather than going the opposite way like the US. Macron is surprisingly very old fashioned there.
It's also a strategy for 2022 in order to prevent any traditional right candidates like Bertrand or Pecresse so right voters have no choice between him and Le Pen.
Left is still in shambles but there's definitely room for them if they manage to unite somehow. But uniting the left, as always, is the hardest thing to achieve in French politics.
U.K. and France Call in the Navy, Sort of, in Channel Islands Fishing Dispute
U.K. and France Call in the Navy, Sort of, in Channel Islands Fishing Dispute
French fishing crews dropped their threat to blockade a port on the island of Jersey, but the standoff over post-Brexit fishing rights augured a future of similar disputes.
May 6, 2021Updated 5:13 p.m. ET
French fishing boats at the entrance to the harbor in St. Helier, Jersey, on Thursday.Marc Le Cornu, via Reuters
LONDON â It wasnât another Falklands War, let alone a modern-day battle of Trafalgar. Yet, when naval ships from Britain and France converged in the waters off the island of Jersey on Thursday, it was a vivid reminder of the loose ends left by Britainâs bitter departure from the European Union.
The maritime standoff came after 60 French fishing boats massed to blockade a port in Jersey in an ugly spat over post-Brexit fishing rights. By dayâs end, tempers had cooled as both sides pledged to work out differences over new licensing requirements for the French fishermen who ply these coastal waters. The French protesters shot off flares and waved angry banners, then sailed away.
The sudden eruption of tensions in the English Channel, five months after Britain ratified its split with the European Union and on the eve of a British election, drew theatrical displays of muscle-flexing in London and Paris â suggesting it was a politically expedient six-hour clash, even if it augurs months or years of tensions ahead.
The dramatics began Wednesday evening when Prime Minister Boris Johnson deployed two Royal Navy vessels, the H.M.S. Tamar and the H.M.S. Severn. His office called it a âprecautionary measure,â but it amounted to a vigorous show of support for Jersey, a crown dependency of Britain and the largest of the Channel Islands.
A day later, France answered with its own deployment of two naval patrol ships near the island, which lies just 14 miles off the French coast. French officials said they were sent to protect the âsafety of human life at seaâ in the crowded waters off Jerseyâs capital, St. Helier. British papers published video of a French trawler ramming the stern of a British pleasure craft; no one was hurt.
Earlier in the week, a French government official warned that France could cut off the power supply to Jersey, most of which is delivered through undersea cables from France. That brought a derisive reaction from London, where officials muttered that even Germany hadnât turned off the lights when it occupied Jersey during World War II.
For Britain, which just played host to foreign ministers from the Group of 7 nations and is debuting its post-Brexit role in the world, a clash with France over fish in the English Channel seemed like a relic of a bygone age. But it also laid bare the risks of life outside the European Union.
âThis is the kind of old-fashioned dispute that the European Union was created to prevent,â said Simon Fraser, the former top civil servant in Britainâs Foreign Office. âWhen you leave the European Union, you risk reopening them.â
GĂ©rard Araud, a longtime French diplomat who served as ambassador to the United States, said, âWhat is happening in Jersey is, on the one hand, totally silly. Threatening to cut off the electricity makes no sense.â
Still, Mr. Araud said the indignant French reaction had a deeper subtext: The countryâs sense of anger and loss at Britainâs departure from the European Union, where it had helped balance Franceâs relationship with Germany.
Relations had already soured on a range of issues as Britain finalized its divorce from the European Union. President Emmanuel Macron of France raised doubts about a coronavirus vaccine developed at the University of Oxford and produced by AstraZeneca, a British-based drugmaker, prompting charges of âvaccine nationalism.â
In December, Mr. Macron briefly cut off access to freight shipments to and from Britain to prevent a fast-spreading variant of the virus that originated in Britain from leaping across the English Channel.
At issue in Jersey are new licensing requirements the authorities imposed on French fishing boats, who have long worked the waters around the Channel Islands. Among other things, the vessels are required to carry equipment that allows their locations to be tracked.
Under the part of the Brexit agreement governing fishing, which went into effect on May 1, following a four-month grace period, Jersey granted fishing licenses to 41 French boats larger than 12 meters, or 39 feet. The problem, according to Marc Delahaye, director of the Normandy Regional Fisheries Committee, was that the additional requirements were imposed without warning or consultation. The European Commission said the British government had notified it of the changes last week and that it was in discussions with London.
As a crown dependency, Jersey is not part of the United Kingdom and has special status that gives it self-governing rights, including its own Legislative Assembly, as well as fiscal and legal systems. However, Jerseyâs reliance on French electricity makes its economy vulnerable, Mr. Delahaye said, noting that it was in the interests of the British and French governments to calm the situation.
âI donât think that London and Paris want to start firing missiles across the Channel,â he said.
Franceâs Europe minister, ClĂ©ment Beaune, said Thursday that France also wanted a quick easing of tensions and the implementation of the Brexit trade agreement. But he told Agence France-Presse, âWe wonât be intimidated by these maneuvers.â
While the dispersal of the French fishing boats defused the immediate crisis, the authorities in Jersey have yet to grant licenses for smaller French vessels. Fishing, therefore, could remain a flash point.
For Mr. Johnson, however, the timing of the clash arguably could not have been better. Voters went to the polls in Britain on Thursday in local and regional elections that are viewed as a referendum on his Conservative Party after Brexit and a year of the pandemic. News that he had deployed Navy warships, bristling with machine guns, pushed aside a skein of reports about his ethical conduct while in office.
âOur New Trafalgar,â said a headline in the online edition of the Daily Mail, referring to the 1805 battle in which the Royal Navy vanquished the navies of France and Spain and established Britainâs maritime supremacy. One of the French patrol boats, the Athos, was much smaller than the British warships, it noted.
On Thursday, Mr. Johnson called the chief minister of Jersey, John Le FondrĂ© , to reiterate âhis unequivocal support for Jersey,â according to a readout from Downing Street. Hours later, the government declared the crisis âresolved for nowâ and said the two warships would prepare to return to port.
Fishing was one of the thorniest issues when Britain negotiated its new trade agreement with the European Union, which came into force in January. The deal ended decades during which Britainâs fishing fleet was under the same system as France, with their catches negotiated regularly among the member countries.
Many in Britainâs fishing industry supported Brexit because they believed that for decades, they had been forced to share too much of the fish caught in Britainâs coastal waters with continental crews.
But the agreement sealed by Mr. Johnson and negotiators in Brussels just before Christmas was a disappointment to British fishing communities, who had been promised a âsea of opportunitiesâ by Brexit supporters.
Instead, the increase in annual quotas for British fishing crews was initially modest. And because Britain has left Europeâs single market for goods, British fish and shellfish require more documentation and checks when sent to markets in continental Europe, making them more difficult and expensive to export.
Fishing rights have long provoked acute tensions between Britain and its neighbors. From the 1950s to the 1970s, Britain was embroiled in a confrontation with Iceland that became known as the âcod wars.â At its peak, 37 Royal Navy vessels were mobilized to protect British trawlers in disputed waters.
While none of these clashes have mutated into broader military conflicts, diplomats said there was always a risk of accidental escalation.
âThis is not going to settle down,â said Barrie Deas, the chief executive of the National Federation of Fishermenâs Organizations. âFish will be a source of a toxic relationship for a long time, possibly for decades.â
Constant MĂ©heut contributed reporting from Paris.
U.K. and France Call in the Navy, Sort of, in Channel Islands Fishing Dispute
French fishing crews dropped their threat to blockade a port on the island of Jersey, but the standoff over post-Brexit fishing rights augured a future of similar disputes.
May 6, 2021Updated 5:13 p.m. ET
French fishing boats at the entrance to the harbor in St. Helier, Jersey, on Thursday.Marc Le Cornu, via Reuters
LONDON â It wasnât another Falklands War, let alone a modern-day battle of Trafalgar. Yet, when naval ships from Britain and France converged in the waters off the island of Jersey on Thursday, it was a vivid reminder of the loose ends left by Britainâs bitter departure from the European Union.
The maritime standoff came after 60 French fishing boats massed to blockade a port in Jersey in an ugly spat over post-Brexit fishing rights. By dayâs end, tempers had cooled as both sides pledged to work out differences over new licensing requirements for the French fishermen who ply these coastal waters. The French protesters shot off flares and waved angry banners, then sailed away.
The sudden eruption of tensions in the English Channel, five months after Britain ratified its split with the European Union and on the eve of a British election, drew theatrical displays of muscle-flexing in London and Paris â suggesting it was a politically expedient six-hour clash, even if it augurs months or years of tensions ahead.
The dramatics began Wednesday evening when Prime Minister Boris Johnson deployed two Royal Navy vessels, the H.M.S. Tamar and the H.M.S. Severn. His office called it a âprecautionary measure,â but it amounted to a vigorous show of support for Jersey, a crown dependency of Britain and the largest of the Channel Islands.
A day later, France answered with its own deployment of two naval patrol ships near the island, which lies just 14 miles off the French coast. French officials said they were sent to protect the âsafety of human life at seaâ in the crowded waters off Jerseyâs capital, St. Helier. British papers published video of a French trawler ramming the stern of a British pleasure craft; no one was hurt.
Earlier in the week, a French government official warned that France could cut off the power supply to Jersey, most of which is delivered through undersea cables from France. That brought a derisive reaction from London, where officials muttered that even Germany hadnât turned off the lights when it occupied Jersey during World War II.
For Britain, which just played host to foreign ministers from the Group of 7 nations and is debuting its post-Brexit role in the world, a clash with France over fish in the English Channel seemed like a relic of a bygone age. But it also laid bare the risks of life outside the European Union.
âThis is the kind of old-fashioned dispute that the European Union was created to prevent,â said Simon Fraser, the former top civil servant in Britainâs Foreign Office. âWhen you leave the European Union, you risk reopening them.â
GĂ©rard Araud, a longtime French diplomat who served as ambassador to the United States, said, âWhat is happening in Jersey is, on the one hand, totally silly. Threatening to cut off the electricity makes no sense.â
Still, Mr. Araud said the indignant French reaction had a deeper subtext: The countryâs sense of anger and loss at Britainâs departure from the European Union, where it had helped balance Franceâs relationship with Germany.
Relations had already soured on a range of issues as Britain finalized its divorce from the European Union. President Emmanuel Macron of France raised doubts about a coronavirus vaccine developed at the University of Oxford and produced by AstraZeneca, a British-based drugmaker, prompting charges of âvaccine nationalism.â
In December, Mr. Macron briefly cut off access to freight shipments to and from Britain to prevent a fast-spreading variant of the virus that originated in Britain from leaping across the English Channel.
At issue in Jersey are new licensing requirements the authorities imposed on French fishing boats, who have long worked the waters around the Channel Islands. Among other things, the vessels are required to carry equipment that allows their locations to be tracked.
Under the part of the Brexit agreement governing fishing, which went into effect on May 1, following a four-month grace period, Jersey granted fishing licenses to 41 French boats larger than 12 meters, or 39 feet. The problem, according to Marc Delahaye, director of the Normandy Regional Fisheries Committee, was that the additional requirements were imposed without warning or consultation. The European Commission said the British government had notified it of the changes last week and that it was in discussions with London.
As a crown dependency, Jersey is not part of the United Kingdom and has special status that gives it self-governing rights, including its own Legislative Assembly, as well as fiscal and legal systems. However, Jerseyâs reliance on French electricity makes its economy vulnerable, Mr. Delahaye said, noting that it was in the interests of the British and French governments to calm the situation.
âI donât think that London and Paris want to start firing missiles across the Channel,â he said.
Franceâs Europe minister, ClĂ©ment Beaune, said Thursday that France also wanted a quick easing of tensions and the implementation of the Brexit trade agreement. But he told Agence France-Presse, âWe wonât be intimidated by these maneuvers.â
While the dispersal of the French fishing boats defused the immediate crisis, the authorities in Jersey have yet to grant licenses for smaller French vessels. Fishing, therefore, could remain a flash point.
For Mr. Johnson, however, the timing of the clash arguably could not have been better. Voters went to the polls in Britain on Thursday in local and regional elections that are viewed as a referendum on his Conservative Party after Brexit and a year of the pandemic. News that he had deployed Navy warships, bristling with machine guns, pushed aside a skein of reports about his ethical conduct while in office.
âOur New Trafalgar,â said a headline in the online edition of the Daily Mail, referring to the 1805 battle in which the Royal Navy vanquished the navies of France and Spain and established Britainâs maritime supremacy. One of the French patrol boats, the Athos, was much smaller than the British warships, it noted.
On Thursday, Mr. Johnson called the chief minister of Jersey, John Le FondrĂ© , to reiterate âhis unequivocal support for Jersey,â according to a readout from Downing Street. Hours later, the government declared the crisis âresolved for nowâ and said the two warships would prepare to return to port.
Fishing was one of the thorniest issues when Britain negotiated its new trade agreement with the European Union, which came into force in January. The deal ended decades during which Britainâs fishing fleet was under the same system as France, with their catches negotiated regularly among the member countries.
Many in Britainâs fishing industry supported Brexit because they believed that for decades, they had been forced to share too much of the fish caught in Britainâs coastal waters with continental crews.
But the agreement sealed by Mr. Johnson and negotiators in Brussels just before Christmas was a disappointment to British fishing communities, who had been promised a âsea of opportunitiesâ by Brexit supporters.
Instead, the increase in annual quotas for British fishing crews was initially modest. And because Britain has left Europeâs single market for goods, British fish and shellfish require more documentation and checks when sent to markets in continental Europe, making them more difficult and expensive to export.
Fishing rights have long provoked acute tensions between Britain and its neighbors. From the 1950s to the 1970s, Britain was embroiled in a confrontation with Iceland that became known as the âcod wars.â At its peak, 37 Royal Navy vessels were mobilized to protect British trawlers in disputed waters.
While none of these clashes have mutated into broader military conflicts, diplomats said there was always a risk of accidental escalation.
âThis is not going to settle down,â said Barrie Deas, the chief executive of the National Federation of Fishermenâs Organizations. âFish will be a source of a toxic relationship for a long time, possibly for decades.â
Constant MĂ©heut contributed reporting from Paris.
why is this in the "France" thread? 
This is a FRANCE vs UK issue
Mods don't be stupid @FAH1223 @tru_m.a.c
This is a FRANCE vs UK issue
Mods don't be stupid @FAH1223 @tru_m.a.c
@Liu Kang @mbewane
Whatâs next for Franceâs Francafrique policy? The fallout from the pandemic seems like itâd stretch out Franceâs bandwidth to impose its will in Francophone Africa while still taking care of domestic issues.
We all know China has begun chipping away at the Frenchâs sphere of influence in Africa. Wondering whatâs coming next up.
SN: @mbewane when next Iâm in Paris we gotta link up
Whatâs next for Franceâs Francafrique policy? The fallout from the pandemic seems like itâd stretch out Franceâs bandwidth to impose its will in Francophone Africa while still taking care of domestic issues.
We all know China has begun chipping away at the Frenchâs sphere of influence in Africa. Wondering whatâs coming next up.
SN: @mbewane when next Iâm in Paris we gotta link up
mbewane
Knicks: 93 til infinity
No doubt breh
Regarding Françafrique tbh I've kind of been out of the loop lately. But with Deby dying, China making moves as well as Russia (in CAR) the time may have come for them to start readjusting their policies. My guess is that they will try to move more towards "soft power" by investing in cultural and intellectual exchanges, last year was supposed to be a whole year of events linked to Africa and iirc there's some big debate with african intellectuals coming up later this year. Of course, when I talk about "exchanges" I mean having a very small number of intellectual, artists etc come over for a clear limited time to show how "open" France is, financing a couple of events/programs etc on the continent, and so on. Some areas where France still has an advantage against other players in Africa is obviously the common language, decades of common (imposed) history and a long-standing cultural policy (not sure what China or Russia does in that area). To put it briefly, France knows these countries and these countries know France, so it'll take a while for either part to totally move away from that relationship. Look at Rwanda, despite all the talk of turning their backs on french/France they made sure to have a Rwandan at the head of La Francophonie.
The only real thing remaining from Françafrique is the Franc CFA currency imo.
But it's both a good and bad thing. The good being that as it's indexed on the Euro, it's relatively stable. There was talk about a new west African currency called Eco last year but I dont remember where they are with it. From a sovereignty point of view, it would be better for those francophone states to manage thilgs themselves in a monetary union obviously.
Regaring the geopolitics, China has been making its moves with their new silk road policy. But it seems that they are now starting to backtrack on it as those investmnents aren't really paying. Also. there is still a strong cultural bond (post colonial obviously) between west African countries but it's less of a top down relationship as it was decades ago. Still not horizontal but it's getting better IMO.
Now the population of those W African countries seem to still resent France but politically, the relationships are evolving in the right direction. There will still be politicians using the colonial past to get free points in elections like it's being done in Algeria at the moment but it would also greatly help if France formally apologized or give cultural artefacts back from our museums.
Overall, I don't think those countries could be deemed as France's backyard any more but its influence is still strong.
ADevilYouKhow
Rhyme Reason
ADevilYouKhow
Rhyme Reason
