‘Symbol of polarisation’: EU scraps plans to halve use of pesticides

The European Commission is shelving plans to cut pesticide use and is taking the pressure off agriculture in its latest emissions recommendations, as farmers around Europe continue protests demanding higher prices for their products and an easing of EU environment rules.

The original proposal to halve chemical pesticide use in the EU by the end of the decade – part of the EU’s green transition – “has become a symbol of polarisation”, said the commission president, Ursula von der Leyen. She added that she would ask the commission to withdraw the proposal.

Separately on Tuesday, the commission recommended that the EU slash net greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2040 but without the stipulation from previous drafts that farming would need to cut non-CO2 emissions by 30% from 2015 levels in order to comply.

The moves mark the bloc’s latest environmental concessions to farmers, whose recent protests across Europe in countries including France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland and Greece spread this week to Spain and Italy.

Last week, in response to the protests, the bloc announced plans to limit market disruption from Ukrainian products entering the EU and delayed rules on setting aside more land to promote soil health and encourage biodiversity.

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Protests continued to spread on Tuesday. In Spain, (...) Greek farmers also said on Tuesday they would block motorways and converge on Athens (...) In Italy, farmers from argricultural regions protesting about red tape and cheap non-EU imports have begun converging on Rome (...)

(...) Individual member states have also taken steps to appease angry farmers, with Germany watering down plans to cut diesel subsidies. Meanwhile, Paris is scrapping a planned diesel tax increase and promising more than €400m (£342m) in targeted help.

The task of drafting proposals on pesticide legislation is likely to fall to the next commission. Von der Leyen said on Tuesday they had made little progress over the past two years in the European parliament or the European Council, representing EU member states.

Far-right and anti-establishment parties, which are projected to make major gains in June’s European parliamentary elections, have picked up on farmers’ grievances as part of a wider drive against EU influence, pushing them to the top of the bloc’s agenda. A new commission will be formed after the June vote. (...)

Excerpts from this interview :

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The French liberal and conservative Right has increasingly adopted the xenophobic terms of language employed by the far-right, to the point where the once-distinct lines separating the two camps have become blurred, if not dissolved. The latest example is a comment by Emmanuel Macron’s former prime minister Édouard Philippe, a centre-right presidential hopeful, who placed “anti-white racism” on a par with other forms of racism. Mediapart’s  Fabien Escalona turned to political scientist Émilien Houard-Vial, a specialist of the contemporary French Right, for his analysis of why and how what was taboo has become normalized.
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What does this tell us about the current state of France’s rightwing camp, and when did the linguistic crossover begin? For an insight, Mediapart turned to political scientist Émilien Houard-Vial, a teacher with the Sciences Po Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics, and who is a widely recognised specialist of the contemporary French Right.

Mediapart: Édouard Philippe has adopted the expression “anti-white racism”. How should one interpret this new example of the legitimisation of the phrases of the far-right?

Émilien Houard-Vial: It can be seen as surprising given that Édouard Philippe, during the length of his political career, has rather highlighted liberal themes. A former juppéiste, [editor’s note, a close supporter of former conservative prime minister Alain Juppé], he is regarded as a political leader who comes from the moderate fringes of the UMP [conservative party, now renamed Les Républicains].
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That is why, beginning three or four years ago, we are looking at a qualitative change, which was established with the arrival of Éric Ciotti as the head of LR. A threshold was crossed. It translates by the centrality and radicality of a rhetoric according to which a majority and native population sees itself threatened – at a cultural and symbolic level as well as in its physical integrity – by Islamism and, more generally, by minorities that are both non-assimilable and ‘decivilised’.        

The result is that today, LR officials rise up on social media against a minister who denies the “obvious” link between delinquency and immigration, and this without any form of consequent opposition within the party.

Mediapart: By force of taking up the ethno-centrist and authoritarian vocabulary of the far-right, what in substance still distinguishes the LR from the latter?

E.H-V: On those issues, it’s become increasingly difficult to discern. The differences have become ‘meta-ideological’ in the sense that there is no more fighting over the issues, but rather over the manner of defending the arguments. That’s what Éric Ciotti does when he explains that the LR is the Rassemblement National [RN] in a more competent form. The added value of the Right would be that it is better placed to enact its programme. That joins with a political culture that further distinguishes itself from the RN, and in which its cadres have been socialised: a culture of a party of government, of people who know how to ‘behave’ in order to concretely exercise power
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So, one cannot say that LR and the RN propose exactly the same thing, even if factually the positions are evermore closer. To take another example, some people in LR call for the removal of birthright citizenship, or also a moratorium on immigration – a manner of drawing closer to Marine Le Pen’s “zero” immigration.

Mediapart: There have been numerous studies that show that competing with the far-right on its own territory is a mistaken strategy in the medium- and long-term. In France, is there a probability that the conservative opposition will become aware of this and attempt a different approach?

E.H-V: LR has so much criticised the “limp Right” and the “rightwing of the Left” that it seems to me difficult to implement a reversal. During the [parliamentary] debates over the motion rejecting the draft legislation on immigration, its Members of Parliament painted Darmanin as an “immigrationist”. A lot of the moderate electorate have already been dissuaded by the evolution of the language.
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Figures like [LR Member of Parliament and former secretary general of the party] Aurélien Pradié try to think of a dignified way out of the dilemma between ‘Macronism’ and ‘Lepenism’ – or ‘Zemmourism’. According to that view, LR should champion new issues, in line with the major preoccupations of the population, notably of those living in urban peripheries or rural areas abandoned by the state, which are lacking public services. These issues could be the subject of a line that mobilises the traditional values of the Right, like merit.

That is what senior civil servant Emmanuelle Mignon tried to do under Nicolas Sarkozy, and it should be noted that she has just taken up service again within LR where, with the rank of vice-president, she heads the “ideas” section of the party.

But how can this work be carried out when Éric Ciotti insists that the priority lies in the battle against wokeism and civilisational decline? Or when some are waiting for the collapse of ‘Macronism’, telling themselves that Laurent Wauquiez could appear as if a Gaullist saviour? The party has still not collectively analysed why the Sarkozist strategy worked in certain conditions in 2007, and why it failed on three occasions afterwards.  

Fabien Escalona, 31 December 2023 à 21h43

Excerpts from the article :

A total of 16 women have accused the actor Gérard Depardieu of sexual assault, including rape. While Depardieu has firmly denied the allegations, a French television documentary investigating the claims this month revealed hitherto unseen footage of his lewd behaviour. Amid the outrage sparked by the documentary, 56 showbiz stars this week signed an open letter denouncing the “lynching” of Depardieu. But the most notable of those who have leapt to the actor’s defence is Emmanuel Macron, who slammed what he called a “manhunt” against the actor, even wrongly suggesting the incriminating recording in the documentary had been doctored. In this op-ed article first published in French last week, Lénaïg Bredoux and Marine Turchi analyse the French president’s ill-judged intervention.

Speaking on December 20th on public TV channel France 5, in the round-table discussion programme “C à vous”, French President Emmanuel Macron jumped to the defence of Gérard Depardieu over a string of rape and sexual violence allegations made against the actor, whose lewd behaviour towards women, and obscene comments about a young girl, were exposed in a recent documentary. (...)

Macron’s defence of the actor on C à vous on December 20th came just 24 hours after his government’s highly controversial new hardline legislation on immigration, which enshrines the practice of “national preference” was approved in Parliament, thanks to support from conservative and far-right members of the chamber. The transformation of what had been initially rejected draft legislation into a law that reflected the programme of the far-right split Macron’s ruling Renaissance party and led to the resignation of the health minister.

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Conspiracy theory and attacks upon the media

In a disturbing move, Emmanuel Macron relayed the idea, already put about by Depardieu’s family and the rightwing Bolloré media group (notably CNews, the Journal du dimanche, and the “Touche pas à mon poste” TV chatshow), that the France 2 documentary had doctored the 2018 recording of the actor’s comments made during his visit to North Korea. On four occasions, Macron referred to “controversies” and created doubt as to whether the documentary footage had been manipulated by journalists in order to deliberately deceive viewers. “I am wary about the context, I’ve understood that there have been controversies about reports […], about words that were out of sync with the images,” said Macron, adding that “people will have to debate this”.
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Meanwhile, France Télévisions announced that it had appointed a huissier de justice (a bailiff with legal power to serve as witness) to watch the rushes in question. In his report, the huissier attests to the fact that the images showing a girl aged about ten riding a pony and the lewd comments made by Depardieu are part of the exact same sequence, thus invalidating both the accusation by Depardieu’s family that it was the result of “fraudulent editing” and the doubts cast over the sequence by the French president.

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It is not the first time that the French president has targeted journalists, and is in fact the latest in a long list of attacks since he first came to office in 2017. But this latest example is situated within the context of a rapprochement between Macron and French media and publishing tycoon Vincent Bolloré. The two men have put aside their previously frosty relationship and in September held a secret meeting at the Elysée Palace, according to French daily Le Monde, which suggested that Bolloré sought Macron’s help over a European Commission probe into one of his recent acquisitions. (...)

Separating ‘transgression’ and sexual assault

By stepping onto the moral ground, Macron – who said the Légion d’honneur “is not a moral order”, and that “there can continue to be transgressive people in it” – contributed to making the behaviour of Depardieu supposedly ordinary. This excuse of “schoolboy humour” and comments like “Oh it’s OK, it’s Gérard”, which Mediapart heard so often during its investigation into the accusations against Depardieu by 13 women who accuse him of sexual violence, is today adopted by the French president. Yet the controversy is not about an issue of “transgression”, but one of allegations of rape, sexual assault and harassment, and therefore about potential crimes.

Depardieu is currently formally placed under investigation in a judicial probe into his suspected “rape” and “sexual assault” of actress Charlotte Arnould, which was opened after she filed a formal complaint against him. Depardieu denies the accusations. A total of 15 other women have recounted in the media how they fell victim to sexual assaults by Depardieu (13 of them detailed their accounts to Mediapart in an investigation published in April, and two others similarly accused the actor on France Inter radio in July).

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“When he says ‘I won’t take part in a manhunt’, he is judging the women who have filed complaints, the women who have given their accounts,” added Mailfert. “He is saying that it is them whose approach is reprehensible.”

How Macron publicly supported ministers accused of rape

It was not the first time that the French president brought up the issue of the presumption of innocence – a fundamental principle under French law of a person’s innocence unless found guilty in a court of law, and which no-one in the debate about Depardieu places in question. In the past and separate cases of three serving ministers facing rape allegations – current interior minister Gérald Darmanin, ecological transition minister from 2017-2018 Nicolas Hulot, and Damien Abad, minister in 2022 for autonomy and the handicapped – Macron chose to keep them in office in the name of the presumption of innocence (the cases against Darmanin and Hulot would finally be dropped).

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publication croisée depuis : https://slrpnk.net/post/4246733

Bangladesh is battling its worst dengue outbreak on record, with more than 600 people killed and 135,000 cases reported since April, the World Health Organization said Wednesday, as one of its experts blamed the climate crisis and El Nino weather pattern for driving the surge.

The country’s health care system is straining under the influx of sick people, and local media have reported hospitals are facing a shortage of beds and staff to care for patients. There were almost 10,000 hospitalizations on August 12 alone, according to WHO.

Dhaka is one of the most densely populated cities in the world and rapid unplanned urbanization has exacerbated outbreaks.

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“There is a water supply problem in Dhaka, so people keep water in buckets and plastic containers in their bathrooms or elsewhere in the home. Mosquitoes can live there all year round,” Kabirul Bashar, professor at Jahangirnagar University’s Zoology department, wrote in the Lancet journal last month.

“Our waste management system is not well planned. Garbage piles up on the street; you see a lot of little plastic containers with pools of water in them. We also have multi-story buildings with car parks in the basements. People wash their vehicles down there, which is ideal for the mosquitoes.”

To cope with the onslaught of infections, Bangladesh has repurposed six Covid-19 hospitals to care for dengue patients and requested help from WHO to help detect and manage cases earlier, WHO said.

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Climate crisis spreading and amplifying outbreaks

The record number of dengue cases and deaths in Bangladesh comes as the country has seen an “unusual episodic amount of rainfall, combined with high temperatures and high humidity, which have resulted in an increased mosquito population throughout Bangladesh,” WHO said in August.

Those warm, wet conditions make the perfect breeding ground for disease-carrying mosquitoes and as the planet continues to rapidly heat due to the burning of fossil fuels, outbreaks will become more common in new regions of the world. (...)

As the climate crisis worsens, mosquito-borne diseases like dengue, Zika, chikungunya and yellow fever will likely continue to spread and have an ever greater impact on human health. (...)

“We are seeing more and more countries experiencing the heavy burden of these diseases,” said Abdi Mahamud, WHO’s alert and response director in the health emergencies program.

Mahamud said the climate crisis and this year’s El Nino weather pattern – which brings warmer, wetter weather to parts of the world – are worsening the problem.

This year, dengue has hit South America severely with Peru grappling with its worst outbreak on record. Cases in Florida prompted authorities to put several counties on alert. In Asia, a spike in cases has hit Sri Lanka, Thailand and Malaysia, among other nations. And countries in sub-Sarahan Africa, like Chad, have also reported outbreaks.

Calling these outbreaks a “canary in the coalmine of the climate crisis,” Mahamud said “global solidarity” and support is needed to deal with the worsening epidemic.