A collar or other physical appariments wouldn’t stop you from abducting it either. Where I come from and (I assume) in many parts of the world, cats have an electronic chip in their neck with basic info about the owner and how to contact them, which would be discovered when you bring them to the vet.

But I think that’s more of a cultural thing. Personally, I consider not letting your cat roam free in the neighbourhood (if you have the ability to let them) unjust and borderline animal abuse, close to how I would consider it if you kept your dog inside all the time.

Finally, taking a cat home out of, what, pettiness(?) sounds like a terrible idea, because beyond any notion of ethics, dealing witha cat you keep away from their territory and the people they know would be both a psycological and financial perspective. If you want to be hurtful to someone, there are easier and cheaper ways to do it than to abduct their pets.

So no, as a pet owner, abduction is really not anywhere near being a concern for me. Getting run over though? That IS a concern, particularly when cats panic. However, cats have far better hearring than we do and can hear cars from a mile away (esp when they’re familiar with them).

Culture wise? Probably. Institution wise though…?

Our current republic was founded by de Gaule, and our constitution was written by him as well. The thing, he’s a millitary general, who (much like a good chunk of the French population at the time) held disdain toward parlementarism, due to the lack of stability of the Fourth Republic.

What that means? Our current system has much of the power concentrated in the hands of the gov (see 49.3 and to some extend 47.1 where the PM can just decide to override anu vote on law. It was something taboo, only used a fair few times before Macron, like once in 2014(?) and it ruined the PM (at the time Manuel Vals)'s carrier. Macron used it dozens of times throughout his years as President), leaving the National assembly with little manuveur than the censor motion (dissolves the current gov, but leaves the president in power).

That and Macron preparing to sell our public media and hospital to the private certainly don’t give me mich confidence in that regards if the RN were to win (’ •_•)

From what I understand, he was hoping for :

1. Destroy the incoming alliance between our two Far Rights parties (that worked)
2. That the trad right party would implode (that worked)
3. That the left would self-combust like always (that did NOT happen)

And that he would thus be the ‘only credible choice’ against Far Right. (Note that in the last legislative elections, he was NOT given a majority in the National assembly so that he’d have to negotiate with other parties, which he refused to do anyway, except maybe with the small trad right wing party).

Obviously, that didn’t work out. As other in the French subs have pointed out, he’s an ex-banker. He’s used to making risky bets. But now’s first time where he has to assume the consequence if he looses it.

(Here we go again)

First things first, shame on you Politico for showing outdated projection results. The actual outcome has been published now (after big cities’ votes, including Paris, have been counted) and Far Right lost 5% (they’re now polling at 29.2%), barely ahead of the Left Alliance (28%). That’s both lower than the polls (which were giving her a whoping 37%), and their result in the last presidential elections.

Edit: source: https://www.resultats-elections.interieur.gouv.fr/legislatives2024/ensemble_geographique/index.html

Secondly, seat projections, right now are highly unstable due to our two turns system. RN (Far Right) might have some allies from the trad right wing parry who was utterly destroyed, but both the NFP (Left Alliance) and Macron’s Renaissance* have said their candidates need to desist when they’re third and Far Right is first to try to cumulate their votes.

*Macron’s PM Gabriel Attal has, for the moment, said there might be exceptions to that rule for the candidates of the radical left party France Unbowed which they consider to be be ‘too extreme’ for their taste so we’ll see.

(Also, slight reminder that Politico is a property of Alex Kreuger, the German equivalent of Rupert Mudrock. Don’t expect full neutrality.)

The vote finished in the night and we got the official results now. Paris voted massively NFP and Renaissance, so Far Right is now at 29.3% while NFP is just behind them at 28.0%. Honestly? Given the polls we had, RN is lower than anyone could have hoped.

Source: https://www.resultats-elections.interieur.gouv.fr/legislatives2024/ensemble_geographique/index.html

I’m kind of surprised this image of France having a Far Right issue is only becoming a thing now though. These results are close (if not better for non far right voters) than the last 2022 Presidentals, and Far Right already had a huge score in 2017.

34% is already lower than what they polled (and it will go down more as cities’ vote get counted). Though, you are right, the normalization of Far Right IS scary af. But it’s not a recent thing in France, it started nearly two decades ago, but surged to an extreme during the past few years esp with:

• Bolloré (our own personal Murdock) bought more and more media, fired the journalists, and put propagandist in their place.

• Macron started taking Far Right’s talking points (immigration), language (‘national preference’, which is a concept that makes no sense) and methods (just two days ago, his party made, published and propagated on social media a fake ‘NUPES’ (name of the last Left Alliance) website to calculate one’s future pension based on their ‘program’. As it turns out, the calculations were not based off their program at all and was nearly always defavorable to the person)

• Macron, when asked about the surge of Far Right, had only one response: bUt WhAt aBoUt tHe LeFt? (And goes on and on to try and sell a ‘both sides’ to try and make himself more popular. Spoilers: it didn’t work) It’s also why it’s refreshingly suprirsing to not hear him bash ‘theLleft’ tonight, and instead call on everyone to vote against Far Right.

Gee, the title sure is sensationalist. Nothing has been ‘won’ yet. The actual percentage here don’t matter, the system works using two rounds in each circonscription (subdiv of France which can elect 1 MP). What really matters now is who will call to vote for who. The NFP (Left Alliance) leaders said no vote for Far Right, and Macron (in spite of how much he shat on the left) called for a ‘grand coalition against the RN’ (RN being Far Right here).

And I’ll repeat it as many times as it takes 34% IS FAR FROM 50% (The RN is unlikely to find allies, as all the traitors of the trad right wing party have already gone to them)

Edit: forgot to mention that not all votes have been counted yet, the big cities finishing up later, which will likely drive the NFP’s score up and RN’s down.

*some. While as much as I heavily dislike this party and their positions, I don’t think they’re all just okay with fachism. There’s been a great number of high ranking officials from that party who denounced this proposal when it was announced out of nowhere on live TV yesterday.

Basically, Les Republicains (Trad-conservative right wing) is the descendant party of De Gaulle, chief of the French Free Forces and probably the most iconic french figure in WW2. This party has an history with fighting fachism, so this twist of position (which is not that surprising from the guy that proposed it) goes against the party’s tradition and heritage (ironicly).

It’s been making headwaves here, and he does NOT have the support of his party in this endeavour. If someone were to speculate, the more likely outcomes of this decision would be a party splinter or even the death of the party itself (considering that since 2017, they’ve really lost a lot of their electorate whose moderates went to Macron and extremists to Le Pen) than an alliance with Far Right.

Though honestly? There’s been so many twists in the past two days that anything’s possible at this point.

Ehh… a proper political analyst would probably add some nuance to that, but that’s a kind of how it feels (the austerity measures were like pills forced down our throats that only made us sicker). Keep in mind there are other factors in play like:

• billionaires buying out more and more newspapers/TV channels and giving far right way more coverage than any other party
• beyond wealth gap increase, inflation being on the rise + the disastruous state of the housing market made people poorer and poorer
• the soc-dems have messed up their presidency back in 2012 and the traditional right wing having imploded after a big scandal and Macron’s surge
• Russia apparently paying huge desinformation campaigns here

… and probably some more I forgot to add.

Honestly (that’s just my personal opinion but) with the way he’s been acting in the past few weeks after polls gave Far Right far ahead of his party, Macron’s been looking more and more and more desperate. He tried debates between his PM and the Far Right candidate, made a big speech 2 days before the election to plea against far right (a speech in which were pointed out his many contradictions), his PM intervined out of the blue in a debate between each party’s lead EU MEP (most awkward moment in a political debate I’ve ever seen, denounced by every journalist union).

His popularity has been dwindling (with reason) since 2017 and only won the 2022 elections by virtue of not being far right (and the people refused to give him majority in the parliement in exchange). In the past two years, he’s been enacting austerity measure after austerity measure several of which with zero approval, bypassed parliement to get them into law, and barely avoided having his governement destituted (by parliement) by the skin of his teeth. And you know what’s worst? His austerity measures didn’t even ‘save public finances’ because following each of them, he gave additional tax breaks to companies, which means our budget deficit is in a worse shape than it was in 2017.

Long story short, he’s been playing stupid games for the last few years, and the stupid price is that Far Right is now the first party in France and nobody has a clue on how to get them down bar them completely failing at ruling.

(Of course it isn’t just his fault that Far Right is on the rise, but he IS a pretty big cause)

Well, it’s a risky move. Especially since just tonight, Far Right won by a landslide in the EU Parliement elections, so it’s likely the results will play against him.

Many of us (in the french subs) think it might be an attempt on his part to get far right into power through the parliment to show electors that all they spout is bull, and make them to suffer hard losses in the 2027 presidential elections.

Edit: some news drop and he apparently believes he can make big wins in this one. We’ll see if this bet will pay off, but personally, I sincerly doubt it will ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

His party lost hard in the EU Parliement elections tonight. The last legislative elections in France were a few years ago, and this is the one he’s calling for right now.

Not PM, president. It’s part of the constitution to be able to dissolve the National Assembly.