floodgates breached [French elections]

élections #1

On the evening of the first round of the French præsidential elections, I took part in the dépouillement (a strange term meaning a passive or active removal of one’s property, which sounds related to poux (lice), meaning taking everything from someone, including their lice!, but actually originate from despoliare, which also led to despoil) of the votes in the local precinct, which consisted in opening the blue envelopes and sharing the name of the candidate with my colleagues. Surprisingly, there were no null vote and very few empty envelopes. In my rather working class precinct, the far-left candidate, Jean-Luc Mélanchon, came close to the majority of the votes, an indication of a vote utile as the other leftist candidates got hardly any vote. (The far-right candidates got around 20% of the votes.) This clashes with the overall results for my town, where Emmanuel Macron got 40% of the votes.

brown sludge

what’s wrong with this picture [ans.: nothing]

quote of the year

“J’ai eu une vie assez droite, je ne me suis jamais conduit comme un salaud” [I have lived a rather righteous life, I never behaved like a bastard]

Jean-Marie le Pen [condemned for apology of war crimes (1969), contestation of crimes against humanity (2009), Holocaust denial (1988, 2006), antisemitism (1986), racial hatred (2005, 2008), provocation to discrimination against Muslims (2004, 2006) and Roma (2017), and insults (1993, 1998, 2018), demoted of his European parliamentary immunity (1997), suspended from the European parliament for assault (2000), suspected of misappropriation of public funds (2019) and of torture in Algeria, founder of the extreme-right Front National (1972), &tc., &tc., speaking on France Inter]