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While the UK cuts foreign aid from 0.7% of GNI to 0.5%, France is increasing foreign aid from 0.44% to 0.7% of GNI, thus more than making up the difference. https://donortracker.org/country/france
Something I learned via @HerveBerville's very nice personal homepage. https://twitter.com/LCP/status/1361699196747866121?s=20
<pointed sarcasm> When will Macron's neo-colonialist government offer something to differentiate itself from Le Pen in the eyes of the left? </pointed sarcasm>
Following this news perhaps I'll try and get through the second half of widely-respected historian of French, Jewish, and Algerian background Benjamin Stora's report, commissioned by Macron to deepen efforts to achieve find shared truth and reconciliation. https://www.elysee.fr/emmanuel-macron/2021/01/20/remise-du-rapport-sur-la-memoire-de-la-colonisation-et-de-la-guerre-dalgerie
A report that could have been commissioned by France's last President, who was of the left. A President who the French left currently propose no better alternative to. He didn't commission it. And Le Pen, of course, wouldn't commission it.
<pointed sarcasm> When will Macron's neo-colonialist government offer something to differentiate itself from Le Pen in the eyes of the left? </pointed sarcasm>
Reports are easy I suppose. When will the French government actually DO something.
Yes, yes, the increase in foreign aid, and the report on the legacy of French colonialism in Algeria, and the repatriation of Algerians killed by colonial France, yes okay that. But has Macron's government DONE anything on colonial-legacy currency unions? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ivorycoast-france-macron/west-africa-renames-cfa-franc-but-keeps-it-pegged-to-euro-idUSKBN1YP0JR
I've no doubt that much of the French left will continue to do the "nah, almost no difference with Le Pen, I'll abstain" thing in polls. Just like they said they didn't want a Covid vaccine and wouldn't take one, up until they couldn't get one. It really is pretty pathetic.
I did not know this. But why does it fit in my thread? https://twitter.com/omaromalleykhan/status/1362060423814602752?s=20
Here's the website of the new French National Foundation for the Memory of Slavery. Set up in 2019, with significant funding by the French state and signed by both President Macron and the Prime Minister. (there are issues with the foundation, of course). https://memoire-esclavage.org/letat
The goal of the foundation is as stated right up front, "To ensure that colonial slavery as a major fact in the history of France." Is it perfect? Oh no. Far from it. Would Le Pen do it? Of course not. Yet still, "they're very similar, I'd abstain" from much of the French left.
The French ministry of culture, under direction of the President, is now in the final stages of selecting the artist who will create by the end of this year the first French national memorial to the victims of slavery, to be installed outside the Louvre. https://www.culture.gouv.fr/Presse/Communiques-de-presse/Memorial-en-hommage-aux-victimes-de-l-esclavage-une-premiere-etape-est-franchie-ce-5-juin-par-la-publication-de-l-appel-a-participation-artistique
Okay, so increase in foreign aid, report on the legacy of French colonialism in Algeria, repatriation of Algerians killed by colonial France, end/updating of the CFA Franc, national memorial to slavery, ongoing foundation to promote that,... okay, yes,... but apart from that?
