#french pension reform explained

[sam-blackbird]

Hi! If you’re a foreigner looking at France right now (march 2023), you could wonder: “WTF is happening there?!”

I’m French, so let me explain (from what I understood, thanks to friends’ explanation and researches on my own, the government things are not very clear, perhaps on purpose).

If you have no clues, there are currently a lot of demonstrations (and some riots) and strikes. Some are violents and some are peaceful, depending, but I’ll come to that later. First of all: why? Because of a reform on the retirement, basically.

You may think, well, going from 62 to 64 years old don’t seem excessive, right? But that’s only the visible part of the iceberg actually. First, that move was explain by the government by saying it will avoid the collapsing of the system (of retirement). HOWEVER, the minimal age of retirement, 64, can only be 64 if you have: -- a full career (without any unemployed time, and/or part-time work) -- began to work early (like 16/18 years old) -- your 43 annuities (basically, it means that you have to work 43 years, if I understood clearly)

With all being wrote, it means that for a majority of French ppl, counts don’t had up: most of the ppl will have to work until around their 65-67 years.

Moreover, if you leave before the minimal age of retirement (which will be 64), you will not receive entirely your retirement money.

We were told that that reform will allow to save the French pension system --as it will allow to augment the retirement money up to 1200€ (euros). But the money can be took somewhere else, like in the super riches pockets for example, by taking them up to something like 2%, for the system to be fiable. Furthermore, only a minority of French people will obtain these 1200€, as you need a full career without any stop in it to gain it. So that reform penalizes everybody, especially precarious people and women.

That’s why a lot of people are angry right now in France.

On top of that, Elizabeth Born, the French Prime Minister (she is just under the French president in the power ladder in France), pass that reform against the Parlement agreement, using the 49th article of the constitution, paragraph 3 (we call it “49.3″).

That’s why we are angry. That’s why we demonstrate. That’s why there are strikes.

Most of them are non-violent, or at least, the violence don’t come from the demonstrators, but rather from the police officers --who seems to think they have all the rights because they wear the uniform. There are some police brutality (and if some French see that and needs some advices in case of police arrestations, I can provide them). There are also some riots and some thugs who breaks windows and/or stole things and/or deteriorates things / urban furnitures, but it’s not the majority of it (despite what BFM TV claims) (btw, be careful of what you’re watching, some images show the demonstrations as riots).

A lot of young people participates in these demonstrations, because it’s our future that’s at stake. We’re angry. We’ve had enough. All our life (I take my case as an example, for context, I’ll be 20 this year), we’ve been told our planet is dying, that we won’t be able to own a house (after the 2008 economic crisis), and now that we’ll have to work until our old age? We say: that’s enough. So we’re revolting. (some of us even say it’s time to guillotine Macron, to do a remake of 1789)

Some of us use the energy of the desperation, because they have nothing to lose, which make them unpredictable (and maybe dangerous). That’s what’s happening, basically.

[helshades]

Could you please explain why people are so opposed to the pension reform? I'm trying to understand, but living in a country where you can retire at 67 but keep working until 70 if you wish, and everyone is fine with that, I feel I must have missed something.

(Happy to be sent resources if you don't want to make a writeup!)

Same anon as before, forgot to mention I read french so no trouble if you send me french articles or posts. (That is, if you answer the ask, if so thanks in advance!)

It's really not on you, but your Ask did depress me a tad. It aligned with many comments I've spotted across the media coverage of the current French crisis in foreign countries, and most public reactions to it. The worst ones are definitely racist, along the lines of mocking them French that never want to work, but I know the most benign to be genuine: how come the French get to retire so early in life still, and why are they protesting an apparently necessary, surely inevitable, evidently inexorable raise of the legal age for a full pension, when everybody else must retire later in life, which they deem to be entirely natural and normal?

I was about to ask you how did you think the French got to retire as early as 55–60 years of age not that long ago (62 today) if not because of their infamous propensity to go on strike and protest a lot in the first place—in truth I was debating with myself on the tone I should adopt to say it—when it struck me suddenly: the crucial part of your comment was not the age for legal retirement in your country... Rather, it was whether or not the people in your country really happen to be ‘fine with that’.

In late January, the man who modified the Swedish pension system twenty years ago, raising the retirement age to 65, was interviewed by French news outlet. Karl Gustaf-Scherman, who used to administer the Swedish social securty, had a recommendation for President Macron: ‘Don't you imitate us and apply our model.’ In reality, most Swedish people can't physically afford to wait till 65 to retire, and have to leave their careers without a full pension: according to a 2019 study ordered by the national retirement fund, 92% of female and 72% of male retirees saw their pensions diminish (and, consequently, their purchasing power) after Sweden opted for this new pension system based on capitalisation and an increase of the retirement age. ‘Mr. President, the only reform you should pass would be a reform à la française’, Gustaf-Scherman concluded.

Again: are you completely certain that in your country, everyone is fine with working till 67, even 70 years of age? How many factory workers do you know, in your entourage, people who spend all day on an assembly line? How many sewage workers do you know? How many nurses and orderlies still lifting patients at 65, how many masons and tilers dreaming of working past their 70th birthday? Do you think it fair to ask a person to retire five years after everyone else because they've known several periods of unemployment in their career, because of some economic recession or because they've had to give birth to the next generation of humans? Do you find it fine to die before you've reached the legal age of retirement with a full pension, never getting to spend quality time with your grandchildren or your friends or helping out at local associations?

Do you find it normal never to get a rest from work before you die?

It's not only that everyone ought to be allowed some respite after serving their country well by participating in producing the national wealth for forty odd years; it is also that all those neoliberal reforms aim to destroy the remnants of old socialised systems across Europe to replace them with a fully capitalised economy. In other words, the point is for the tenants of a globalised market economy to take control of the gross domestic products of each country, open them to speculative funds and get to play with all that wealth—with the systematic privatisation of national markets allowing for unlimited concurrence and speculation.

France's pension system is still partly based on non-wage labour costs that have allowed its nationalised portion to remain afloat and stable since the creation of the Social Security in 1946. Back then, la Sécurité sociale was actually intended to cover all risks of life, but even then the class war was raging on. The entire history of the Social Security centres on the boss class' attempt to snatch the fund's control from the hands of the workers themselves. The move has definitely accelerated within the last four decades (the Eighties have seen the rise of Neoliberalism, as per the Chicago School's teachings, for further illustration, look up Augusto Pinochet's Chile), somewhat exponentially since 2016's Labour Law, implemented when Emmanuel Macron was a youthful minister of Economy who really began tearing the country apart proper, notably to finance his upcoming presidential campaign. The merciless destruction of our once-protective Labour code truly was the point of entry of his Thatchering enterprise...

I reckon no president of the Republic has been as universally detested as most of the French people have come to loathe Emmanuel Macron. The basis of his electorate is a contingent of very wealthy people, most of whom elderly, who share economic interests in the destruction of national sovereignty in favour of privatisation, since they've got, precisely, shares in the big companies that are to profit from the change; and people who simply don't care about the future generations of pensioners.

Trouble is, if Macron got re-elected a year ago, it was only because votes were extremely divided between many parties and because of a successful campaign to hold far-right candidate Marine Le Pen as a compliant scarecrow , presented in all media as the only one opposition to Macron—which meant that all people had to do to oppose Macron would be to vote for her, as it was sure to scandalise the rich and the Woke... Then, all Macron would have to do, which he did, was to present himself as the only one true credible defence in front of the Fascist Menace. The recipe, which was actually brought to perfection in the early 1980s by to-be-president François Mitterrand (using Marine Le Pen's more sinister father, and founder of the National Front, Jean-Marie Le Pen), is well and truly tried. Still, one of these days, she's going to get to presidency, and Macron will have been her best supporter.

[mariacallous]

More than one million protestors took to the streets in France on March 24, 2023, in response to President Emmanuel Macron’s proposed pension reforms, which would raise the country’s retirement age from 62 to 64. This was the 10th day of national mobilization since January 19, 2023, and the demonstrations show no sign of stopping. After Macron’s government lost its absolute majority in the National Assembly in the 2022 legislative elections — leaving it unable to pass the law through a simple majority — the government decided to use a constitutional tool called Article 49.3, which allows it to pass a law in parliament without a vote on the text. The decision resulted in the government facing two votes of no confidence, which it didn’t lose — but the main one, pushed by a centrist minister of parliament, fell short by only nine votes, indicating how volatile the political situation in France is right now. Macron has said that he will not back down, though there is precedent for the government using Article 49.3 and then later withdrawing the law in response to massive and continuous public protests.

After winning the presidential election last year and beating Marine Le Pen, Macron found himself short of a full majority in the subsequent legislative elections. He has since been struggling with a relative majority, preventing him from pushing the reform agenda he believes he was elected to implement and forcing him to make deals with different political parties inside the National Assembly.

It is an open question whether the “Macron method” in foreign policy, where he puts forward an initiative and then tries to gather momentum and consensus around it, will be applied to French domestic politics. Macron has long said that “en même temps” (meaning “at the same time” in French) — i.e., working simultaneously on a variety of objectives and overcoming traditional divides — was why he wanted to become president. However, there is a question now of how he can overcome political divides and at the same time present the French population with a comprehensive, inclusive, and participatory solution.

There were questions following the no-confidence votes on whether Macron would keep Élisabeth Borne as prime minister. Macron is adamant that he will, though Borne needs to find a way out of the current impasse. He has now tasked her with a “widening of the presidential majority,” which will certainly entail tilting to the right, as both Macron and Borne have little cachet with left-wing voters.

On March 24, Macron gave a much-expected interview to explain the situation and the way forward. He said that he would not yield to violence and that he was now waiting for the Constitutional Council’s final decision on the reform, which it should announce by the end of April. Macron also committed to working with unions on implementing the pension reform.

Another option on the table — which Macron has rejected, so far — is a dissolution of the National Assembly. If that occurs, some projections suggest that the far-right Rassemblement National (National Front) and the left-wing coalition NUPES would receive the two largest shares of the votes, and Macron’s Renaissance would come in third.

In terms of foreign policy, not much change is to be expected, though. France’s constitution lets the foreign policy decisionmaking process rest in the hands of a few individuals. Macron has given the diplomatic cell at the Élysée even more weight in policy setting and policymaking. And, in the face of domestic difficulties, he seems to be following a trend set by his predecessors — focusing his time on foreign policy, which is a “domaine reservé,” a field reserved to the national executive.

Macron’s foreign policy agenda will not be affected by the protests. He is continuing with a planned trip to China, together with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, in the beginning of April. If his agenda is any indication, he will remain extremely involved in foreign policy in the weeks to come.

France’s current instability might pave the way for populist and nationalist parties’ voting shares to grow further. It is a euphemism to write that the far-right and the far-left party La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) have indicated that they wouldn’t support staunch French support for Ukraine. Although NUPES — a wide-ranging coalition of left-wing parties — shares major domestic policy goals, the parties diverge on foreign policy, particularly as it relates to Russia and Ukraine.

Even if parliament plays a marginal role in foreign policy decisionmaking in France, a new National Assembly could also decide to become more vocal and more vehemently question Paris’ current military, financial, humanitarian, and material support to Ukraine. A major issue in Europe right now is ensuring that European and trans-Atlantic unity on support to Ukraine is not only maintained but reinforced. If France were to weaken its support, that would have very serious consequences for internal European Union cohesion and the future of European security.

Interestingly, the French constitution and the Fifth Republic — which Macron, channeling his inner Charles de Gaulle, interpreted from the beginning in a Jupiterean, top-down way — are now putting the onus on the French president to find an inclusive and constructive way out of the political crisis. Macron needs a change in method so that he can dedicate the remaining four years of his second term to bring about some of the reforms — including the institutional ones — that he promised when he first came to power in 2017.

[parcequecestnotreprojeeeet]

Pardon my French, but this guy has major balls. I have never seen anything like it! And I don't mean the kind that hang on the back of trucks in North America aka "truck nuts" for those who are not familiar. They boo him, slap him, throw eggs and shit at him, gilets jaunes him, now this mess, he still runs towards them all the time "pour convaincre". And then there is also his personal life and fighting for that relationship to established first then legitimized in the world. Then the pension reform and not chickening out like prior presidents have. Balls the size of the universe!! Comparable to Napoleons for sure!

Pardon my French too, but he is one hell of a resilient motherfucker! He knows he will never convince people about this pension reform. Who on earth will ever accept to work more years? (even if compared to the rest of Europe 64 is still pretty much the lowest, but anyways!). He knows this and yet, he still tries to explain and convince. It’s almost funny at times tho because it’s a “death” dialogue (or not so much of a dialogue because I don’t think the majority of these protesters even want to dialogue or debate anything) and we know both parts will never come to terms. But he still does it. And he did it during the Gilets Jaunes period too. Man, those hours long public debates were absolute life. The capacity of that guy is just out of this world. He was “dead” before and he managed to pull it over, recover and win the election again (yes yes, he actually won the election. One wouldn’t know, listening to *cough* some people). Let’s see what happens but he will not stop doing his job just because people are outside waiting for him with saucepans. Btw, can I be totally “méprisant” and just say “what a stupid idea, the saucepans”?

[puppyboyumi]

[TikTok video from AjPlus.

The caption: “This young activist (@khahliso.amahle) from South Africa is calling out double standards around support for protests in France vs those across Africa”]

(Transcript Start)

Khahliso Myataza: When Africans protest, we are barbaric. When French people and Europeans protest, it’s like, “Yeah! Let’s do it the way that French people are doing it—they’re doing it right!”

Narrator: This young activist is calling out double standards around support for protests in France vs. those across Africa.

Myataza: Hi, I’m Khahliso. I’m from Johannesburg, South Africa. There were protests in South Africa on the Monday I made that video. And then, in other parts of the continent, there were protests in Nairobi, Kenya, and in Lagos, Nigeria.

Narrator: Around the world, protests against French President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform bill have been celebrated as heroic. This wave of protest across France has been understood to form part of a longstanding tradition of French workers rising up to safeguard their rights. But protests in Africa rarely attract similar international attention and sometimes go unnoticed.

Myataza: Necropolitics and neocolonialism are killing us. So there is a certain urgency to our protests or to our struggles, right? And so, when our voices aren’t met with the urgency that we want, it is disheartening.

Narrator: Did you know that in November 2022 a nationwide strike took place in South Africa among unions that represent some 800,000 workers? Or what about the thousands of protesters who took to the streets of Kenya against the cost-of-living crisis in March 2023? Kenyan protesters even defied a government ban on rallies that came in after the protests began.

Narrator: But less coverage and support around protests in Africa isn’t the only thing troubling Myataza. She explains that how Africans and Black people globally are portrayed and perceived when they challenge systems of power is still influenced by violent colonial legacies.

Myataza: Media has the legacy of portraying African people as barbaric, whether it be through our protests [or] through the way that poverty is framed in our countries. And I do think that people need to understand that these come as a product of colonialism. This was how colonialism framed African people to be; It’s not just with Africans on the continent, you know—looking at how Black Lives Matter was framed, looking at how Haitian people are still demonized.

Narrator: How media chooses to cover a story influences public perception on events and people. Here’s one example: vandalism, property damage, and looting received widespread coverage at the Black Lives Matter protests in the U.S. during summer 2020. But it’s reported that at least 93% of the BLM protests that summer were peaceful. Nonetheless, negative images of violence and looting remain front and center for many—overshadowing the organized calls for an end to police violence in the U.S.

Myataza: French people being the face of resistance is something that angers me because they’re not the only people to have resisted oppressive forces. And as much as we praise the French, we should also be praising communities outside of Europe—people who are doing the same things, for people who are fighting other struggles, right?

Myataza: I’m not dismissing or invalidating the pain that French people have or the vitriol that they might have to their administration, but what they’re doing is not more, or it’s not, like, more special than what is happening on the African continent.

(End Transcript)

I’ve reblogged posts on this topic before, but this is always something that irks me with the hype around the French protests and riots, especially when someone says something along the lines of “Why haven’t Americans done this?” or “Americans are too damn weak. We should protest like the French!” Because, well, WE DID! The BLM protests, especially the few riots that occurred, were a call to action against an oppressive government, police force, and justice system.

They were killing us in the streets and our own homes and when we did the smallest “everyone’s idea of a revolution” shit like breaking a window or spray painting on walls or stealing a tv from Walmart, y’all wanted to switch up on us and tell us that we were going too far and overreacting. No matter how peaceful we are, how much abuse we take, how many of us are killed trying to be peaceful, the media will still paint us as “thugs,” and our murders will continue to be excused in some bullshit way all while we’re thrown scraps of “reform” to make us think we’ve won.

[madamedupigeonsalon]

Politique : il nous fait quoi Macron , la ?

Après sa décision de passer la réforme des retraites, Macron s est expliqué pourquoi il a fait ça . Il voulait pas mais il avait pas le choix . En attendant, j ai été sur page d Instagram et c est pire que Twitter ! Les insultes volent bas , en dessous de la ceinture, tout les coups sont permis ! On voit que c est pas lui qui tient son compte car c est violent comme échange.

Ce qu il faut comprendre c est que les français veulent partir à la retraite plus tôt pour profiter de la vie. Il y a une démocratisation du voyage pour le troisième âge , ce n est pas le bannissement à vie de personnes à la retraite mais plus tôt le souffle d une deuxième vie. C est aller faire de l association , se consacrer à d autres ou à ses petits enfants , c est voyager en groupe etc etc … la découverte de nouvelles horizons.

Ce changement est particulier difficile car c est un mode de vie que les français ont choisis depuis plusieurs années. Pour changer ce sera difficile et par conséquent , cela entraînera des changements sociaux économiques et politiques dans la vie des français. Mais néanmoins, cela ne veut pas dire que les français sont fainéants. Il est montré qu ils travaillent autant que les anglais mais un peu que les allemands. Tout simplement parce que les jeunes ne trouvent pas de travail et les personnes âgées partent plus tôt à la retraite . Toutefois, on voit que les français sont motivés et travailleurs.

Donc, on pense aux allocutions de Macron et tout suite on pense que ça ne veut rien dire. Macron, c est une casserole pour certains comme Sarkozy c était les montres très chères et Hollande, le scooter.

Macron n a peur de rien. Chanter avec des jeunes dans la rue. Aller serrer la main des représentants de différents pays alors que les poubelles brûlent dans Paris. De promouvoir les JO olympiques de 2024 de Paris alors que personnes n écoutent vraiment… mais Macron ne recule devant rien!

La question reste présente dans nos pensées ?Macron pourra t il relancer son quinquennat ? Ou devra t il démissionner ? Vivement les prochaines élections ! Et les JO olympiques !

Politics : What are you doing Macron ?

After his decision to pass the pension reform, Macron explained why he did that. He didn't want to but he had no choice. In the meantime, I've been on Instagram and it's worse than Twitter! Insults fly low, below the belt, all shots are allowed! We see that he is not the one who keeps his account because it is a violent exchange. What you have to understand is that the French want to retire earlier to enjoy life. There is a democratization of travel for the third age, it is not the banishment for life of retired people but rather the breath of a second life. It's going to the association, devoting yourself to others or to your grandchildren, it's traveling in a group etc etc… the discovery of new horizons. This change is particularly difficult because it is a way of life that the French have chosen for several years. To change it will be difficult and therefore, it will lead to social, economic and political changes in the lives of French people. But nevertheless, that does not mean that the French are lazy. It is shown that they work as much as the English but a little more than the Germans. Quite simply because young people cannot find work and older people retire earlier. However, we see that the French are motivated and hardworking. So, we think of Macron's speeches and immediately we think that means nothing. Macron is a pan for some, like Sarkozy was very expensive watches and Hollande, the scooter. Macron is not afraid of anything. Singing with young people in the street. Shake hands with representatives from different countries as the trash cans burn in Paris. To promote the 2024 Olympics in Paris when no one is really listening… but Macron will stop at nothing! The question remains present in our thoughts? Will Macron be able to relaunch his five-year term? Or should he resign? Looking forward to the next elections! And the Olympics!

Kevin Ngirimcuti

[blahblahfishpaste]

How does France's pension age compare to other countries - and why has it sparked protests? | World News | Sky News

[cathkaesque]

There is no “Christmas truce” for the workers of the Electricity Company of France (EDF) who are on strike. Workers are reconnecting service to poor families and lowering the price of tariffs to popular sectors, while cutting off power to police stations, management and large companies.Since the beginning of the strike on December 5, electricians and energy workers maintain power outages against Macron’s pension reform. A fighting method that exposes the strength of the workers and the strategic place they occupy, with the possibility of paralyzing government buildings and large companies with power outages.

While the strike has had a greater impact among workers of the SNCF (railway), RATP (metropolitan transport company of Paris), National Education or even health, energy workers are not far behind.

Among them are electricians and gas workers. Of the main companies in the sector there are 41.4% of workers are striking in EDF (Electricity Company of France), 39% in Engie and more than 60% in Enedis. From Tuesday, December 10, the strikers voted in assemblies to generate localized power cuts. Michaële Guégan, director of human resources at Enedis, the most important electricity distribution network, notes that there have been selective cuts “in certain public buildings, a commercial area in Bordeaux, a university in Lyon and even a hospital center.”

At the same time, the workers changed 80,000 users in the Lyon region to the category of low consumption, and justified their action by saying that “energy is not a commodity” but is “essential goods, whose access must be guaranteed to all.” This action generated enormous sympathy among the popular sectors and a great anger among the businessmen and politicians who consider it a crime.

At the same time, the workers changed 80,000 users in the Lyon region to the category of low consumption, and justified their action by saying that “energy is not a commodity” but is “essential goods, whose access must be guaranteed to all.” This action generated enormous sympathy among the popular sectors and a great anger among the businessmen and politicians who consider it a crime.

In fact, these actions had consequences for the strikers, the union is being targeted by government repression and judicial prosecution. This Thursday, the 20th secretary general of the CGT energy of Lille was arrested and prosecuted.

Nicolas Noguès, deputy secretary general of the CGT energy department of Seine-Saint-Denis, explained how they hit industrial and commercial areas such as Andorra or the city of Dieppe that contains important industries. They also cut the 400 kW Germany-France line.

Bastien, an activist worker at EDF, said “we take the kilowatts of the richest and return them to the poorest.” This means of action, beyond the fact that it penalizes energy suppliers by drastically reducing profits, has the merit of having a positive impact on households, since millions suffer from the country’s energy deficit.

These actions, which have found enormous support among the population, show that the fight against pension reform is not corporate, as denounced by the French Government, but that the workers demonstrate that this strike movement is strongly marked by class solidarity.

[en24news]

"There are no more strikes in France" says Nathalie Loiseau, on the eve of a day of strikes - RT in French

“There are no more strikes in France” says Nathalie Loiseau, on the eve of a day of strikes – RT in French

[ad_1]

On February 5, LREM MEP Nathalie Loiseau explained in an interview with the BCC that “there is [avait] no more strikes in France ”. The next day, 130,000 people according to the CGT marched in Paris to protest against the pension reform.

Guest of the BBC this February 5, LREM MEP Nathalie Loiseau made a…

[anamnesis-archive]

faculté en grève contre la réforme

Before jetting off to France, I was aware of a transport strike affecting train travel and I contemplated the major inconvenience that this caused.  How was I going to make it from Paris to Tours? or do any other inter-city travel?  [I had done a summer exchange to France when I was in high school and had already experienced the country’s so called ‘love’ of striking.  The day I was supposed to head back home, Air France went on strike and caused havoc for my return plans.] Strike woes continued as I arrived in Tours.  That first week, people led three marches in protest, causing traffic pileups around the city.  People chanted, music blared, flares and smoke were detonated.  Then came time for classes to begin and students, solely at the Tanneurs site (that of the Arts and Social Sciences faculty), had barricaded all entrances; their way of joining the political conversation.  Again, I told myself what a major inconvenience -- I just wanted to attend my classes!

According to NPR, this has been the longest lasting strike in French history and has been detrimental to small businesses who are now in a dire survival period.  It began December 5th 2019  -- forty-five days later (January 20th 2020), transport in inner city Paris has finally been re-enacted on an almost back to normal basis. The current strike stems from a proposed retirement reform launched by the French Prime Minister, Édouard Philippe.  Key points include  raising the retirement age from 62 to the ‘pivot age’ of 64 (to obtain a full pension) and reducing the forty-two different pension plans to a singular system.  The ultimate goal is for the government to cut back and save money as life expectancy is increasing, and so, there is a simultaneous increase on the dependance of retirement benefits.  Transit workers are particularly at a disadvantage with this proposed reform as they currently have the ability to retire younger and do not want to lose this privilege.  

I’ve come to ask myself why do the French strike so much? How is there so often something that causes upheaval and discontentment? and in this instance, why is it only the liberal arts students that are en grève? The polytechnic, the medical school, the Deux-Lions law campus, none of them have student organized impediments.  Is it because liberal arts students are woke and empathetic and have a grasp on the larger scale of humanity and the repercussions that this reform will have on themselves and other generations?  

This post has been composed along multiple days, and throughout the process I’ve continuously gained more insight on la grève.�� In my contemporary art course, my prof, instead of going ahead with her lecture, opened the floor to the students to discuss what is happening.  I was very thankful for this opportunity to hear from my French peers their take, opinions and knowledge, as I solely have the views and perceptions of a bystander, not fully aware of the magnitude or severity of the situation.  

January 22nd, ‘des forces de l’ordre’ forcibly broke the picket line at the Tanneurs site, dismembering the group of students who had been there since the beginning of the month.  My prof asked: pourquoi la fac des Tanneurs? To which people responded that it was chosen for visibility reasons as it’s centrally located downtown.  Furthermore, the retirement reform proposes a merit points system based on the number of hours you put in over your career.  As students of the humanities, there lies incertitude regarding future jobs and the necessity to continue with education, which converts to less hours on the work force when compared to other disciplines.    

More controversy surrounds the reform and the notion of sexism present.  Women who choose to have children and take a maternity leave will consequently miss out on point accumulation when off nurturing and raising her child(ren). Women aren’t doing payed work during their mat. leave, yet it’s “le travail reproductif, du travail pour la société”, as my prof put it, when it comes to motherhood.  

There are inklings of another possible strike due to a proposed government reform regarding university mobility.  Research funding will be cut and “une précarisation du personnel”, contract work, will become a more dominant mode of staffing.  It is a constitutional right to strike, and the French choose to act upon it to express their disdain in the hopes of a better outcome.  I must revel and take it all in as it’s part of French culture and a common experience while living in France :)

The country is no foreigner to mass protest movements.  In May 1968, the youth were fed up with the war in Vietnam and the patriarchal society under Charles de Gaulle and sought a change.  Beginning at l’Université de Nanterre, on the outskirts of Paris, men invaded women’s dormitories and vice versa to break down the anti-sexual statutes imposed by the institution (Matthews).  “On May 3, students at the Sorbonne University in Paris rallied to support their Nanterre colleagues by occupying an amphitheater. They were brutally dispersed by Paris police. Hundreds were beaten and 400 arrested in a night of rioting. The Sorbonne was closed” (Beardsley).  Students at l’École des Beaux Arts joined the movement and created political posters as a response. Their work was a collaborative effort; “[i]t’s a collective creation in the sense that someone would draw an image, sometimes would devise a slogan to go with it and sometimes the slogan was provided by someone else" (Hird).  Blue collared workers joined the protest alongside the students.  I’ve included one of the posters from the period of political upheaval.  It can be seen as an appropriation of Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People.  Possibly taking inspiration from the 1968 events, ‘un collectif Tourangeau de profs’ devised political posters in response to the 2020 strikes.  We studied some in my History of Design course, analyzing the graphic design and the implications and influences of the images and text combination.  Both in 1968 and 2020, the artwork remains anonymous.  The artists are creating to get messages across and not for personal recognition; they are working for something larger than themselves.   

The Situationist International group took part in and were influential leading up to the 1968 upheaval.  They considered themselves “anti-state communists: they were heavily influenced by Marx and did not identify with the anarchist tradition, yet shared the anarchist opposition to the state” (Matthews).  The group, in collaboration with the University of Strasbourg, wrote De la misère en milieu étudiant considérée sous ses aspects économique, politique, psychologique, sexuel et notamment intellectuel et de quelques moyens pour y remédier in 1966, fuelling the protests of 1968.  In explaining the current educational system that commodifies students, they state that “[the student’s] own life is totally out of [their] control — life itself is totally beyond him” (Situationists International and the University of Strasbourg), controlled by the ‘masters’ that run the institutions.  This text urged students to exercise their revolutionary drive to make a change.

Works Cited

Beardsley, Eleanor. “In France, The Protests Of May 1968 Reverberate Today - And Still Divide The French.” NPR, NPR, 29 May 2018, www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/05/29/613671633/in-france-the-protests-of-may-1968-reverberate-today-and-still-divide-the-french?t=1582021856596.

Hird, Alison. “Culture in France - France May 68: the Art of Revolution.” RFI, RFI, 5 Apr. 2018, www.rfi.fr/en/20180404-culture-france-may-68-posters-show-where-they-were-made-beaux-arts-paris.

Matthews, Jan D. “An Introduction to the Situationists.” The Anarchist Library, 7 May 2009, theanarchistlibrary.org/library/jan-d-matthews-an-introduction-to-the-situationists.

Situationists International and the University of Strasbourg. “On the Poverty of Student Life Considered in Its Economic, Political, Psychological, Sexual, and Especially Intellectual Aspects, with a Modest Proposal for Doing Away With It.” Translated by Ken Knabb, Situationist International Online, www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/poverty.html.

[arcticdementor]

If I had to characterize the current international situation using only one word, the word “chaos” would be a pretty decent choice (albeit not the only one). Chaos in the Ukraine, chaos in Venezuela, chaos everywhere the Empire is involved in any capacity and, of course, chaos inside the US. But you wouldn’t know that listening to the talking heads and other “experts” who serve roughly the same function for the Empire as the orchestra did on the Titanic: to distract from the developing disaster(s) for a long as possible.

I decided to turn to the undisputed expert on social and political collapse, Dmitry Orlov whom I have always admired for his very logical, non-ideological, comparative analyses of the collapse of the USSR and the US. The fact that his detractors have to resort to crude and, frankly, stupid ad hominems further convinces me that Dmitry’s views need to be widely shared. Dmitry very kindly agreed to reply to my questions in some detail, for which I am most grateful. I hope that you will find this interview as interesting as I did.

…

Here I have to digress to explain the difference between a proper empire and the USSR. A proper empire functions as a wealth pump that sucks wealth out of its imperial possessions, be they overseas, as in the case of the British Empire, or part of the periphery, as in the case of the Russian Empire. The latter inherited the traditions of the Mongol Empire that predated it. The Mongol term “tamga” was often used to indicate the annual tribute to be collected from newly conquered tribes as the Russian Empire expanded east. (Many of these tribes were previously Mongol subjects who understood the meaning of the term.)

Here is the key point: the USSR was not a normal empire at all. Instead of functioning as a wealth pump that pumped wealth from the periphery to the imperial center, it functioned as a revolutionary incubator, exploiting the resources of the core (Russia) and exporting them to the periphery to build socialism, with the further goal of fomenting global communist revolution. The various ethnic groups that were grossly overrepresented among the Bolsheviks were all from the periphery—the Jewish Pale, Byelorussia, the Ukraine, the Caucasus and the Baltics—and they thought nothing of sacrificing Mother Russia on the altar of world revolution.

…

Thus, the image of the USSR as a typical empire is simply wrong. The right mental image of the USSR is that of a prostrate, emaciated sow (Russia) being suckled by 14 fat, greedy piglets (the other Soviet Socialist Republics). For all his numerous failings, Boris Yeltsin did one thing right: he dismantled the USSR (although the way he went about it was beyond incompetent and verged on treason).

If you are in need of an explanation for why Russia is now resurgent, increasingly prosperous and able to invest vast sums in hypersonic weapons systems and in modernized infrastructure for its people, this is it: the 14 piglets had been sent off to root for themselves. This bit of perspective, by the way, puts paid to the rank idiocy of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s “Grand Chessboard”: his theory that Russia wants to be an empire but cannot do so without the Ukraine shatters on contact with the realization that Russia hasn’t been an empire for over a century now and has no need or desire to become one again.

…

After some amount of effort by NATO instructors to train the Ukrainians, the instructors gave up. The Ukrainians simply laughed in their faces because it was clear to them that the instructors did not know how to fight at all. It was then decided that the “road map” for Ukraine’s inclusion in NATO should be set aside because the Ukrainians are just too crazy for sedate and sedentary NATO. The trainers were then replaced with CIA types who simply collected intelligence on how to fight a high-intensity ground war without air support—something that no NATO force would ever consider doing. Under such conditions NATO forces would automatically retreat or, failing that, surrender.

…

Now the fight is between Poroshenko and a comedian named Vladimir Zelensky. The only difference between Poroshenko and Zelensky, or any of the other 30+ people who appeared on the ballot, is that Poroshenko has already stolen his billions while his contestants have not had a chance to do so yet, the only reason to run for president, or any elected office, in the Ukraine, being to put oneself in a position to do some major thieving.

…

The platforms of all the 30+ candidates were identical, but this makes no difference in a country that has surrendered its sovereignty. In terms of foreign relations and strategic considerations, the Ukraine is run from the US embassy in Kiev. In terms of its internal functioning, the main prerogative of everyone in power, the president included, is thievery. Their idea is to get their cut and flee the country before the whole thing blows up.

It remains to be seen whether the second round of elections will also be an outright fraud and what happens as a result. There are many alternatives, but none of them resemble any sort of exercise in democracy. To be sure, what is meant by “democracy” in this case is simply the ability to execute orders issued from Washington; inability to do so would make Ukraine an “authoritarian regime” or a “dictatorship” and subject to “regime change.” But short of that, nothing matters.

…

None of this matters, because we don’t know which of the two is the US State Department’s pick. Depending on which one it is, and regardless of the results of any elections or lawsuits, a giant foot will come out of the sky and stomp on the head of the other one. Of course, it will all be made to look highly democratic for the sake of appearances. The leadership of the EU will oblige with some golf claps while choking back vomit and the world will move on.

…

The Saker: What about the EU and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe? Where is the EU heading in your opinion?

Dmitry Orlov: The EU has a number of major problems. It isn’t fiscally or monetarily healthy. As a whole, or as its constituent nations, it is no longer capable of the exercise of its full sovereignty, having surrendered it to the US. But the US is no longer able to maintain control, because it is internally conflicted to the point of becoming incoherent in its pronouncements. Overall, the structure looks like a matryoshka doll. You have the US, as a sort of cracked outer shell. Inside of it is NATO, which is an occupying force across most of Europe right up to the Russian border. It would be useless against Russia, but it can pose a credible threat of violence against the occupied populations. Inside of NATO is the EU—a political talking shop plus a sprawling bureaucracy that spews forth reams upon reams of rules and regulations.

Since none of this military/political superstructure is actually structural without the key ingredient of US hegemony, we shouldn’t expect it to perform particularly well. It will continue as a talking shop while various national governments attempt to reclaim their sovereignty. British referendum voters have certainly tried to prod their government in that direction, and in response their government has been experimenting with various methods of rolling over and playing dead, but a different government might actually try to execute the will of the people. On the other hand, the governments of Hungary and Italy have made some headway in the direction of reasserting their sovereignty, with public support.

…

What may speed things up is that Europe, along with the US, appear to be heading into a recession/depression. One effect of that will be that all the East European guest workers working in the west will be forced to head back home. Another will be that EU’s subsidies to its recent eastern acquisitions—Poland and the Baltics especially—are likely to be reduced substantially or to go away altogether. The influx of returning economic migrants combined with the lack of financial support are likely to spell the demise of certain national elites which have been feasting on Western largesse in return for a bit of Russophobia.

We can imagine that this swirling tide of humanity, ejected from Western Europe, will head east, slosh against the Great Wall of Russia, and flood back into the west, but now armed with Ukrainian weapons and knowhow and entertaining thoughts of plunder rather than employment. There they will fight it out with newcomers from Middle East and Africa while the natives take to their beds, hope for the best and think good thoughts about gender neutrality and other such worthy causes.

These old European nations are all aging out, not just in terms of demographics but in terms of the maximum age allotted by nature to any given ethnos. Ethnoi (plural of “ethnos”) generally only last about a thousand years, and at the end of their lifecycle they tend to exhibit certain telltale trends: they stop breeding well and they become sexually depraved and generally decadent in their tastes. These trends are on full display already. Here’s a particularly absurd example: French birth certificates no longer contain entries for father and mother but for parent1 and parent2. Perhaps the invading barbarians will see this and die laughing; but what if they don’t?

…

What will spark the next round of Western European ethnogenesis is impossible to predict, but we can be sure that at some point a mutant strain of zealots will arrive on the scene, with a dampened instinct for self-preservation but an unslakable thirst for mayhem, glory and death, and then it will be off to the races again.

…

It is true that there isn’t much debate within Russia about foreign policy. Putin’s popularity has waned somewhat, although he is still far more popular than any national leader in the West. The pension reform did hurt him somewhat, but he recovered by pushing through a raft of measures designed to ease the transition. In particular, all the benefits currently enjoyed by retirees, such as reduced public transit fees and reduced property taxes, will be extended to those nearing retirement age.

It is becoming clear that Putin, although he is still very active in both domestic and international politics, is coasting toward retirement. His major thrust in domestic politics seems to be in maintaining very strict discipline within the government in pushing through his list of priorities. How he intends to effect the transition to the post-Putin era remains a mystery, but what recently took place in Kazakhstan may offer some clues. If so, we should expect a strong emphasis on continuity, with Putin maintaining some measure of control over national politics as a senior statesman.

…

The Saker: You recently wrote an article titled “Is the USS Ship of Fools Taking on Water?” in which you discuss the high level of stupidity in modern US politics? I have a simple question for you: do you think the Empire can survive Trump and, if so, for how long?

Dmitry Orlov: I think that the American empire is very much over already, but it hasn’t been put to any sort of serious stress test yet, and so nobody realizes that this is the case. Some event will come along which will leave the power center utterly humiliated and unable to countenance this humiliation and make adjustments. Things will go downhill from there as everyone in government in media does their best to pretend that the problem doesn’t exist. My hope is that the US military personnel currently scattered throughout the planet will not be simply abandoned once the money runs out, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if that is what happens.

The Saker: Lastly, a similar but fundamentally different question: can the US (as opposed to the Empire) survive Trump and, if so, how? Will there be a civil war? A military coup? Insurrection? Strikes? A US version of the Yellow Vests?

Dmitry Orlov: The US, as some set of institutions that serves the interests of some dwindling number of people, is likely to continue functioning for quite some time. The question is: who is going to be included and who isn’t? There is little doubt that retirees, as a category, have nothing to look forward to from the US: their retirements, whether public or private, have already been spent. There is little doubt that young people, who have already been bled dry by poor job prospects and ridiculous student loans, have nothing to look forward to either.

But, as I’ve said before, the US isn’t so much a country as a country club. Membership has its privileges, and members don’t care at all what life is like for those who are in the country but aren’t members of the club. The recent initiatives to let everyone in and to let non-citizens vote amply demonstrates that US citizenship, by itself, counts for absolutely nothing. The only birthright of a US citizen is to live as a bum on the street, surrounded by other bums, many of them foreigners from what Trump has termed “shithole countries.”

It will be interesting to see how public and government workers, as a group, react to the realization that the retirements they have been promised no longer exist; perhaps that will tip the entire system into a defunct state. And once the fracking bubble is over and another third of the population finds that it can no longer afford to drive, that might force through some sort of reset as well. But then the entire system of militarized police is designed to crush any sort of rebellion, and most people know that. Given the choice between certain death and just sitting on the sidewalk doing drugs, most people will choose the latter.

…

At this rate, when the end of the US finally arrives, most of the people won’t be in a position to notice while the rest won’t be capable of absorbing that sort of upsetting information and will choose to ignore it. Everybody wants to know how the story ends, but that sort of information probably isn’t good for anyone’s sanity. The mental climate in the US is already sick enough; why should we want to make it even sicker?

[ericfruits]

Emmanuel Macron seems to be surrendering. Or is it tactical retreat?

WHAT SORT of leader surrenders to the crowd? Any French president of the modern era, you might reply. On December 10th a queasy-looking Emmanuel Macron joined the long list of presidents who have been thrown off course by street protests. Hoping to placate the mob, he promised to increase the take-home pay of minimum-wage earners by 8%, to let workers get overtime pay and Christmas bonuses tax-free and to revoke higher social charges on modest pensions. That was his second U-turn in less than a week. On December 6th the government had cancelled the rise in fuel duty that had provoked the gilets jaunes (yellow jacket) protests. The direct cost of Mr Macron’s climb-down is about €10bn ($11bn), or around 0.4% of GDP a year. This threatens to send the French budget deficit crashing through the Maastricht limit of 3%, further setting back French hopes for deepening the euro zone. Mr Macron’s finance minister has vowed to find cuts to offset the extra spending.

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To many, Mr Macron now looks like a president who can be cowed by flying bricks and sagging polls. His ability to bring about further reform is seriously, perhaps fatally, compromised. The gilets jaunes, having scented weakness, will surely press for more. A fifth successive Saturday of protest is now promised for December 15th. In a televised address Mr Macron admitted that he had been slow to acknowledge the hardships faced by ordinary people. He might have been more persuasive had he not recorded his speech in the grandest room in the Elysée palace, sitting behind a gilded desk.

And yet, in important ways, Mr Macron held firm. He insisted that he will not reverse an early decision to scrap France’s wealth tax. This infuriates many of the protesters, who call him the “president of the rich”. But it was right. Although Mr Macron never managed to convince voters of this, taxes on the rich had been raised to ludicrous levels by his Socialist predecessor, François Hollande. The wealth tax was routinely dodged and raised little money, but it helped scare off mobile wealth-creators. Just as scrapping the tax signalled that France was open for business, a U-turn would have suggested it had once again shut its doors.

Even more important, Mr Macron gave no hint that he would delay or ditch any of his crucial labour-market overhaul (see article). Although this is not perfect, it has stripped away some of the rules that cosset workers who already have jobs but deter companies from hiring new staff. The reform caps the size of unfair-dismissal awards and curbs the power of labour unions to impose industry-wide agreements on hours, pay and overtime. Already, these changes seem to be boosting employment. If Mr Macron had backtracked, investors would have concluded that France was as unreformable as Italy.

To have a chance of enacting the rest of his agenda, Mr Macron must persuade voters that this week’s shifts in policy were not a surrender but a tactical retreat. Much of the €10bn he is giving the left-behind is in the form of a wage subsidy for low-paid workers, which boosts their incomes without eroding the incentive to work. This is a good idea; indeed, he should have done it at the start of his presidency.

Other changes will be less popular, but they are just as necessary. Mr Macron wants to simplify and curb the growth of France’s unsustainable pension system. Inevitably that will require workers to toil longer or receive smaller pensions than they had been expecting. Faster economic growth would ease the pain, and would be easier if the French state was smaller. The government spends 56% of GDP each year, one of the world’s highest shares. It also owns stakes in almost 100 firms, most of which ought to be fully privatised.

None of these reforms can be sold from behind a gilded desk. Mr Macron needs to roll up his sleeves and explain to people in plain, un-haughty terms why his plans will make France better off. If he cannot manage that, he will fail.

This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "Surrender, or tactical retreat?"

[narcisbolgor-blog]

Paris breathes a sigh of relief as Macron takes center stage

Paris (CNN)A fiery dance party broke out in the French capital on Sunday night as Parisian voters celebrated the victory of their new president, Emmanuel Macron.

How Emmanuel Macron won the French presidency

The set was perhaps unconventional for a presidential victory party -- but then again, this was no ordinary election -- nor an ordinary electorate.

Throughout the campaign, Macron's unique political offering spoke to neither the traditional left nor the right, helping shake up an already confused electorate looking for political solutions outside of the norm.

On Sunday night, with 66.06% of the vote secured, Macron overthrew any chance of his opponent, the far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen, entering a higher political sphere -- and Parisians rejoiced.

It seemed as if the city was released from the plague of a decision unlike any other, collectively embracing a joie de vivre once again, manifested in the form of a new president whose landslide victory was celebrated until the early hours of Monday morning.

In front of two gigantic LED screens with Macron's party logo "En Marche!," a stoic man waving a French flag stood out from a crowd of undulating bodies.

"This is a new story and a new beginning for France," Loic Victor said.

Victor, a 30-year-old international development officer originally from Martinique, a Caribbean island that's an overseas region of France, told CNN he supported Macron from the beginning because he defined a new political class, one that is "not right, not left."

Macron, France's youngest incoming president, was once a political wild card. The 39-year-old centrist independent -- a former investment banker turned government minister who entered the presidential race without the backing of any established party -- garnered a solid footing through his pro-EU stance and promises to reform France's welfare and pension systems.

But there is no doubt that his win was also largely thanks to the traditional left, a group that had no candidate in the second round of voting. Many on the left voted for Macron out of fear of the other option: a country led by Le Pen and her xenophobic, anti-EU extremist National Front party.

At the victory rally, Anas Ammounah, a 29-year-old Syrian refugee, said he was especially on-edge in the weeks leading up to the election.

Along with his wife and daughter, who were reunited in France six months ago, Ammounah waved the French flag as high as his smile was wide. He spoke of the generosity and kindness he received in the 18 months since he arrived in the country as a documented refugee -- and of the fear that it might be stripped away under a Le Pen government.

"We're here to celebrate a victory against Le Pen," he told CNN. "We found that Le Pen would stop immigration and we were scared."

"We hope Macron will stop (Syrian President) Bashar, so we can return to our home," he added.

Returning to their home in war-ravaged Aleppo remains a distant dream for Ammounah's family, so they basked in the bright lights of Macron's win in their new home in Paris. The win to them was a victory for France but also felt uniquely theirs.

As victory celebrations raged on into the late hours of Sunday night, a group of left-wing protesters clashed with police in a Northern Paris suburb.

What to know about Emmanuel Macron

When asked about the protests, Macron supporter Pascal Bardin, 60, chalked it up as a typical reaction of young, left-wing political activists. He told CNN that the demonstrations didn't speak specifically to the fact that Macron won but reflected the French national pastime of protest.

"Whenever anyone is in power, they say 'degage' (French for 'Get Lost')," Bardin explained. "Whenever anyone can't fix my life, 'degage.'"

Macron will face a daunting task in uniting a nearly obliterated traditional left (along with Macron's allies from the right) who voted for him simply in rejection of Le Pen.

At his victory rally, Macron spoke to this fissure.

"I know the country is divided and this has led to people voting for extremes," Macron said during a speech at his team's headquarters Sunday night. "I understand the anger, the anxiety, the doubt which many of you have expressed and it is my responsibility to hear that."

Earlier in the evening, as the final polls rolled in, a crowd of residents of Paris' 15th district lined the streets around Macron's heavily-policed campaign headquarters.

Sabine Gruhier was one of them.

The 47-year-old Parisian tech-savvy start-up officer donned a red hat in commemoration of the lives lost in the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attacks as she waited to hear the results.

Gruhier told CNN that although Macron's win was "surely the best option" for her country, it was a shame that her fellow citizens were pushed to such a polarizing extreme that presented them to choose an option that didn't represent any of their political identities.

As Macron declared victory, Gruhier let out a sigh of relief, but vowed to remain politically vigilant throughout his candidacy. She called on Macron to investigate the spread of fake news online -- something she believes helped to fuel a grassroots spread of "ignorance" that led to Le Pen's rise in popularity.

"With this election I think people realized democracy is something fragile, and we have to keep fighting to protect it. Even if Macron won, we must still fight -- because the situation that Le Pen put us in was frightening."

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[vsplusonline]

A Civil Contract: Same sex relationships and marriage

New Post has been published on https://apzweb.com/a-civil-contract-same-sex-relationships-and-marriage/

A Civil Contract: Same sex relationships and marriage

In April 1954 when the proposed Special Marriage Bill was being debated in Rajya Sabha a Congress MP from Bihar, Tajamul Hussain, raised the question of how the law might deal with sex change. According to the report in the Times of India (ToI) Hussain asked “if the husband changed into a woman and the wife into a man what should happen to such a marriage? Would it become void?” Hussain’s query was brushed off as irrelevant at that time, but it is not irrelevant today. With easier availability of medical services for transitioning and greater visibility and acceptance of transgender people, their marriages too are now happening. Some involve transmen and transwomen marrying each other, as with Tista Das and Dipan Chakraborty, who married in Kolkata last year after meeting in a trans legal clinic. Others are cases like that of Lalit Salve, who transitioned from being Lalita while employed as a police constable in Maharashtra. This February Salve’s marriage to his wife Seema was announced in Aurangabad.

It is no surprise that something once considered not even worth discussing is now quietly taking place in India. Marriage matters in India, as we are reminded incessantly by films and TV, by the wedding industry’s excesses, by print and online matrimonial ads, by the way even perfect strangers, leave alone family members, feel able to ask questions about our marital status. And then there is the quiet courage of those who brave the horrific risks of caste and community outrage to marry those they love.

Even those who choose to walk away from marriage, like certain unmarried spiritual leaders and politicians, subtly reinforce the importance of marriage with the implication that they are sacrificing the fulfilment that, apparently, only marriage can bring, in service to some larger cause.

So when Ayushmann Khurrana, whose recently released film Shubh Mangal Zyada Savdhan deals with both same sex relationships and marriage, was interviewed earlier this year it probably seemed just obvious to say he was proud that same sex marriages had been legalised in India. Khurrana quickly corrected himself with a tweet saying he wished it would soon happen, but it does suggest he managed to make the whole film assuming that the Supreme Court’s decriminalisation of homosexuality in 2018, which features in the film’s climax, automatically allowed same sex marriage.

Because what would be the point of being able to be openly gay or lesbian in a society like India which puts such a huge value on marriage and still be unable to get married to the partner of your choice? Nikesh Usha Pushkaran and Sonu MS, who both live in Kerala, certainly thought that way. This was why in July 2018, even before the Supreme Court had finished its hearings, they had gone to Guruvayur Temple and quietly exchanged rings to mark their commitment to each other. But they knew, when the verdict came in September that year, that while it was welcome it did nothing to make their marriage legal. And since a religiously sanctified and legal marriage did not seem remotely possible at the moment, they opted for the solution that has been available, in some form, for Indians since 1872 – a civil marriage under the Special Marriage Act.

For all that marriage is held to be a key component of society, its formal recognition by the state is a relatively new institution. Through much of history, in India and across the world, marriage has just involved some kind of declaration before witnesses, or decisions by community elders or local authorities, to recognise the union. It has been argued by scholars like James Boswell that these unions sometimes included same sex ones. The need for state recognition of marriage began, in Europe, with opposition to the authority of the Catholic church. Protestant preachers like John Calvin in the 16th century suggested the need and the anticlerical French revolution made it imperative in 1792.

A few decades earlier, in 1753, the UK Parliament made it obligatory for marriages to be registered by the state sponsored church – but only in England and Wales. Till as recently as 1940 Scotland recognised marriages made before general witnesses, which lead to many elopements to Gretna Green, the first Scottish town beyond the border with England, where marriages were often witnessed by the local blacksmith.

The Scottish legal scholar Henry Maine must have been well aware of the complexities of attitudes towards marriage when he accepted the job of legal advisor to the Viceroy of India in 1862. And this might explain his unexpected receptivity to a petition he received from a faction of the Brahmo Samaj in 1868 asking for a new law to recognise marriages that did not subject them to the demands of traditional religious authorities.

It is quite possible that the petition had more to do with the long battle of parts of the Brahmo Samaj to be recognised as a community distinct from Hindus, but Maine saw a larger potential in it. As a legal scholar he would become famous for enunciating a theory of how laws in society move from the conventions of status in traditional society to the autonomy of individuals who then create laws based on contracts.

As Perveez Mody notes in The Intimate State, her study of how the concept of love marriage has evolved in India, “the fact that the Brahmos were seeking to repudiate their ‘status’ (in this case, caste community) and intermarry through ‘reformed rite’ in the presence of a Brahmo authorised not by religious authority but by the state was, in a sense, in keeping with Maine’s theory of progress from caste ‘status’ to civil marriage ‘contract’.” Much to the surprise of everyone, possibly including the Brahmos, Maine came out with a Native Marriage Act that created a non-religious marriage for everyone willing to take that route. Initially it required formal rejection of religion (and also didn’t apply to Christians) as a neat way to step around the principle followed since the Rising of 1857 that the British would not meddle with Indian religious traditions.

Maine was drafting the law in Calcutta, then the most cosmopolitan part of India and this influenced his view of an India beyond the structures of the traditionalists. Mody notes how he cited the register of students of Calcutta University “in which, under the records of the religions of students, ‘Theist, Vedaist, Pantheist and Spiritualist are among the commonest…’” This helped him, and his like-minded successor James Fitzjames Stephens (an uncle of Virginia Woolf) to withstand the immense fury and pressure that traditionalists brought against the Act. They had to agree to modifications (like dropping the exception for Christians) and, even after it passed in 1872, very few couples actually went on to marry under it.

But it did set a template for the Special Marriages Act of 1954 that would come to replace it. This law enacted by independent India simplified the idea first set forth by Maine, creating a broad law for state recognised marriage (and divorce) that did not involve religion. Again, opposition from traditionalists did result in inclusion of clearly patriarchal clauses like different age requirements for men and women, of 21 and 18 respectively. As it happens, the current government has suggested that this specific anomaly of ages needs to be corrected – yet it is an example of the reasons cited in Nikesh and Sonu’s petition for the Act being discriminatory against them. Much of the language of the Act is gender neutral, but in a few key places like this issue about ages there are specific references to different genders. The Kerala petition explains that, with religious marriage impossible, Nikesh and Sonu decided to go the Special Marriages route, only to find “to petitioners utter shock” that these references to opposite sex couples seemed to prevent them using the law. The petition details the insult they felt at this and “thus highly aggrieved by this unjust and unequal treatment and gross discrimination meted out by the unjust provisions of the Special Marriages Act, 1954, the Petitioners are approaching this Hon’ble Court for appropriate remedies.”

Lest anyone feel inclined to dismiss their personal feelings, the petitioners also note the considerable practical problems they face by not being allowed to marry: “Being married carries along with it the right of maintenance, right of inheritance, a right to own joint bank accounts, lockers; nominate each other as nominee in insurance, pension, gratuity papers, etc.” Numerous other problems could be cited – not least the cases of same sex partners who have not been allowed hospital visitation rights to their partners of many years. And all this really is the crux of the marriage debate from Maine’s Act of 1872 till today. Opponents to the Special Marriages Acts have alleged, in often the most lurid way, that it will lead to immorality and promotion of lusts, when those who want to marry simply want the regular, mundane rights to live like any other married couple in India.

This week in Kerala High Court Justice Anu Sivaraman directed the Centre to provide an answer to the petition, postponing the matter by a month for this purpose. It is to be hoped that when this comes the response will not indulge in the moralism that opponents to the Special Marriages Acts have wasted their time in, but look at the practical issues that the petition raises and what solutions could be found.

This is a question other countries have faced, and many are still dealing with it. In Mexico, for example, it has been left to individual states, leading to a truly confusing situation where same sex couples have rights in parts of the country and not others. In Israel religious authorities have blocked civil marriages for both heterosexuals and homosexuals. This has led to a truly jugaad solution where couples are allowed to go abroad and marry and then those marriages are recognised in Israel. It is hard to see who this benefits other than travel agents.

There is also the interim step that countries like France have taken of offering most of the benefits of marriage under civil partnerships, but not actual marriage itself. But as France recognised, this is a somewhat meaningless distinction, and it is discriminatory too. The simplest solution, as proponents of the Special Marriages Act have always recognised, is civil marriage for all.

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January in Northern Europe

Berlin Cathedral

The D&O Diary was on assignment in northern Europe last week, with stops in Berlin, Hamburg and Paris. I know from past experience that traveling in northern Europe in January can be a formidable experience. On this trip, however, mild and dry weather conditions generally prevailed, allowing for some really pretty enjoyable travel experiences.

  The primary purpose of the European visit was to attend the annual Euroforum Haftpflicht Konferenz in Hamburg. I have attended this event before, and it was a pleasure to be back and part of the event again this year. I delivered the Internationale Keynote address on the topic of “Key Developments in D&O Claims.” Fortunately, I was able to address the audience in English. I would like to thank Karin Hanten of Euroforum for inviting me to participate in this well-organized and well-attended event. It was a pleasure to be able to see many old friends and make new friends as well. It was also enjoyable to learn how many in the audience members follow The D&O Diary.

  When I look at this picture, taken during my presentation, all I can see is that somehow the cord for the microphone got looped outside of my suit jacket.

    With Sebastian Gemberg-Wiesike, Financial Lines Underwriter for Germany and Switzerland at Tokio Marine HCC. Sebastian spoke immediately after I did, discussing the liability risks for companies with American Depositary Receipts trading in the U.S.

  With Matthias Andres of Zurich Insurance

    With Markus Haefeli of Haefeli & Schroeder Financial Lines AG in Zurich, Switzerland

    With Sebastian Vogel of Airbus Aeroassurance.

    With Alexander Stampf of Tokio Marine HCC in Barcelona

  Before traveling to Hamburg for the conference, my wife and I traveled to Berlin for the weekend.  I have been to Berlin before, and every time I have visited I have made exactly the same mistake, which is that I fail to allow enough time to explore this vast and fascinating city. This trip was my wife’s first visit to Berlin and so of course we had to visit the city’s most famous landmarks, including the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, and the Berlin Cathedral.

  In Pariser Platz, facing the formerly East Berlin side of the Brandenburg Gate

      In front of the Reichstag

  The Berlin Cathedral with the Fernsehturm in the background. We attended the worship service at the Cathedral on Sunday morning. We were very fortunate that the service featured the choral performance of a Bach cantata.

  There is so much history in Berlin, in some ways almost too much history. We spent a considerable amount of time exploring the remnants of the Berlin Wall and the other remaining vestiges of the city’s division between 1961 and 1989.

  A remaining section of the Berlin Wall, in the Berlin Wall memorial

  A preserved watch tower, in the Berlin Wall Memorial. Before the Wall came down, the Wall cut straight across the road on the right side of the picture.

  Checkpoint Charlie, the security control gate for the former American sector of Berlin. (Note the McDonald’s on the right side of the picture; things have changed a little bit since the Wall came down.)

  One thing we did this trip that we both enjoyed was exploring some of the city’s residential neighborhoods. We walked through the atmospheric streets of the Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood, a pleasant area full of shops, cafes, and restaurants that was inside former East Berlin. We came upon a lively street market, where we enjoyed a makeshift currywurst lunch. A little bit of unexpected sunshine during our stroll made for a very pleasant visit. We also visited the Kreuzburg neighborhood the next afternoon, which was also a very interesting place to visit.

  A street market on Kollwitzstraße in Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin

  One tip for anyone planning a visit to Berlin anytime soon is to make sure to make time for a long visit to the Deutsches Historisches Museum, which is located right on Berlin’s most famous street, Unter den Linden. We spent three hours there and could have easily spent longer. The ground floor exhibits on Germany’s fraught and complicated 20th Century history were particularly well done. I would go back to Berlin just to spend some more time in the museum. Another tip, the Gemäldegalerie art museum, located near Potsdamer Platz,  has an excellent collection of northern European paintings, including works by Dürer, Cranach, Holbein, van der Weyden, van Eyck, and Vermeer.

  One particularly enjoyable thing we did while in Berlin was to attend a concert at the Konzerthaus Berlin. The concert hall was beautifully illuminated at the night we were there.

  From Berlin, we took one of the excellent Deutsche Bahn Inter-City Express (ICE) trains for a quick two hour trip to Hamburg. The mild weather followed us to Hamburg, which allowed us upon arrival to enjoy a quick walk around Hamburg’s two famous lakes, the Außenalster (Outer Alster) and the Binnenalster (Inner Alster). I actually walked around the Außenalster three times during our visit; the Fitbit that my children gave me for Christmas recorded that it is about 10,000 steps around the larger lake. (It is about 4.7 miles around.)

        We also attended a concert while we were in Hamburg, at the venerable Laiszhalle, in the Hamburg city center. There is a brand new concert hall, the Elbphilharmonie, on the river. When we arrived at our seats for the concert hall, we discovered why the city might have felt the need to build the new hall.

  The column almost entirely blocked our view of the stage — I was able to see only the percussion section and two french horns. The sound was muffled as well. I could hear just enough of the music to get the feeling that we were missing a pretty good concert. We left at intermission.

  We left Hamburg to spend this past weekend Paris. It was chilly in Paris, but we continued to enjoy dry and pleasant weather.

  By a long standing tradition, my first stop in Paris is to visit the Jardin du Luxembourg. When I am there, I feel fully in Paris.

  Even deep in winter, the Jardin is still beautiful

  One of our other  important priorities in Paris was to stop by Notre Dame, to check in on the progress of the repair and restoration of the cathedral, after the April 2019 fire.

  Signs posted around the work site explained that the repair process at this point is still focused on trying the stabilize the structure

    Around the structure, they have inserted wooden braces to support the buttresses and columns. It is clear that this process is going to take a very long time.

  Our main objective on this visit to Paris was to see the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at the Louvre. The exhibit had been sold out when I was in Paris in November, so this time I was sure to purchase timed-entry exhibits in advance, online. With the timed-entry requirement, there was a little bit of crowd control. Just the same, the exhibit was mobbed. It was, nevertheless, amazing. There are only 15 surviving paintings attributed in whole or in part to Leonardo; many of them had been gathered for this exhibit. The exhibit also featured extensive displays of Leonardo’s notebooks. The notebooks very convincingly showed Leonardo’s vast curiosity and brilliance. Even with the crowds, it was a really great exhibition.

      When we emerged from the museum, we found that while we had been in the exhibit, a massive protest march had developed along the river. The march was organized as part of national strike organized as a protest by the transportation unions about proposed French pension reform. The march was peaceful and had even something of a festive atmosphere. The relatively pleasant weather helped. The problem for us was that the march blocked our route back to the other side of the river and to  our hotel. So instead, and in the best Paris tradition, we found a cafe and enjoyed a late lunch. We had assumed that by the time we finished our lunch the marchers would finished filing into the Place de la Concorde. We underestimated the size of the march. The marchers paraded along for hours. We finally managed to made our way around the parade and found a river crossing so that we could make our way back to our hotel.

      A nice light lunch while we waited for the protest march to pass.

    Protesters fill the Place de la Concorde

  One of the highlights of our Paris sojourn was a return visit to the Le Christine restaurant in the 6e Arrondissement. We first dined at the much earlier version of the restaurant while we were in Paris on our honeymoon in 1983. We returned to the restaurant with our children in 2000, and again in 2005. Though the restaurant has changed over the years, it remains excellent. Once again, we enjoyed a wonderful meal there.

    In addition to many familiar sites in Paris, we also visited some new places. One of our more interesting discoveries on this visit was the Musée National Gustave Moreau, in the 9e Arrondissement. Moreau was one of the prominent members of the  Symbolist artistic school  in the 19th century. His unusual paintings are full of references to Greek mythology and Christian iconography. When Moreau died in the late 19th century, his home and studio were converted to a museum. The walls of the museum are covered with Moreau’s paintings, many of them unfinished. Many of his paintings are unusual and interesting.

    All in all, it was a great visit to Europe. You wouldn’t think that January would be a great time to visit, but it actually turned out to be a fine time to be there. Of course, I know we were very fortunate with the weather. (The only rain we had the entire trip was on the day of our departure from Paris.) But the cities themselves made the visit so enjoyable. As always, on the way back I found myself trying to figure out when I can go back again.

  More pictures of Paris:

  Here’s something you won’t see very often — the Jardin du Tuileries without any people. The Jardin was closed during the protest marches

  The Louis XIII statute in the Place des Voges

  Scenes of Montmartre

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