BETA nonprofit public democratic european moderated

Search

#Service

Article du Canard enchaîné : quand le sous-entendu remplace la démonstration Je ne comptais pas répondre à chaque attaque, mais le témoignage de Jacques Marsaud, ancien secrétaire général de la ville de Saint-Denis puis ancien dirigeant de la RATP, mérite d'être connu de toutes celles et ceux qui ont suivi cette polémique autour de l'article signé par Frédéric Haziza. Jacques Marsaud a directement écrit au journaliste pour contester la présentation faite de mon parcours et de mon recrutement à la RATP. Ce n'est pas un commentaire extérieur : c'est le témoignage d'un homme qui a personnellement participé à la décision de me recruter, et qui sait donc de quoi il parle. Il le dit sans détour : je n'ai pas été recruté « sans entretien », contrairement à ce que l'article laisse entendre. J'ai passé plusieurs entretiens successifs — avec le chef de service, le directeur du développement, puis la direction des ressources humaines — pour vérifier que mon profil correspondait au poste. J'ai été recruté sur mes compétences, point final. Ceux qui ont eu à travailler avec moi le savent. Quant aux aménagements horaires liés à mon mandat électif, je n'ai jamais rien caché : ce sont les mêmes dont bénéficient tous les agents de la RATP élus. Mais qui a la preuve que je n'aurais pas rempli pleinement mes missions ? Personne. Jacques Marsaud pose lui-même la question au journaliste, et cette question reste sans réponse dans l'article. D'ailleurs, dans ce premier article, on m'accuse de « cumuler deux postes ». Sauf qu'être élu n'est pas un emploi. Chacun le sait, à commencer par ceux qui ont écrit cet article. Confondre un mandat électif avec un poste salarié, ce n'est pas une erreur, c'est un choix rhétorique destiné à faire croire à une fraude là où il n'y a qu'un mandat exercé, comme la loi le permet et l'encadre. Ce que dénonce Jacques Marsaud, c'est une méthode : partir d'un postulat, puis l'habiller de sous-entendus au lieu de le démontrer. Il parle d'un « tissu de sous-entendus infondés », et il a raison. Cette méthode, on la retrouve telle quelle dans le second article, publié le 11 août. Le Canard enchaîné y révèle que plus de 200 personnes travaillent à la RATP tout en exerçant par ailleurs un mandat d'élu. Deux cents situations comparables à la mienne. Et sur ces deux cents, une seule fait l'objet d'un article complet : la mienne. Ce choix n'est pas anodin, et chacun est libre d'en tirer les conclusions qui s'imposent sur ce qui relève de l'enquête et ce qui relève du ciblage. Plus grave encore : entre-temps, Jacques Marsaud avait écrit au journaliste pour rectifier les faits. Ce courrier existait, il était entre les mains de la rédaction avant la parution du second article. Et pourtant, aucune des informations contestées n'a été corrigée. Le journal savait qu'un témoin direct de mon recrutement contestait sa version des faits, et a choisi de publier sans en tenir compte. Je veux aussi dire ma gratitude à celles et ceux qui ont exprimé leur soutien face à cette campagne. Ce soutien compte, et je continuerai à prendre toute ma place, à Saint-Denis comme dans les combats à venir. Jacques Marsaud envisage aujourd'hui de demander un droit de réponse. Je l'y encourage : les lecteurs méritent d'avoir les deux versions. @afpfr @LePoint @humanite_fr @le_Parisien #Journalisme #Transparence #DroitDeRéponse

Live cattle exports are worth nearly €500m to Irish farmers every year. Brittany Ferries are ending their service threatening the whole sector. They use ports owned by Irish citizens yet prevent Irish citizens use of their ships for a legal EU regulated sector. This is wrong. https://t.co/3aJi8JmK80 #IrishFarmers #CattleExports #BrittanyFerries #IE

¿En pleno temblor, a los trabajadores de Blackstone Medical Services les dijeron que si evacuaban podían ser sancionados por “abandono de puesto”? Si esto ocurrió como lo denuncian los trabajadores, es gravísimo. Ningún trabajador debería tener que escoger entre proteger su vida y conservar su empleo. En una emergencia, la prioridad debe ser la seguridad de las personas, no el puesto de trabajo. Estaremos atentos a las explicaciones de la empresa y, sobre todo, a que se respeten los derechos de quienes trabajan allí. La vida de los trabajadores no se negocia. #DerechosLaborales #SeguridadEnElTrabajo #Emergencias

BFMTV 12h

The French government anticipated the health situation related to the solar eclipse on August 12, despite the absence of exceptional measures for emergency services, while warning about the dangers of observing the sun without adequate protection, which has led to criticism of the authorities' preparedness for the event. (translated)

Éclipse solaire: le gouvernement estime que l'événement est "bien anticipé sur le plan sanitaire"

The rise to power of Abelardo de la Espriella in Colombia coincides with Washington's desire to regain control in Latin America. Just like Trump, the new Colombian president instrumentalizes religion in the service of a Christian nationalism. (translated)

Treatment of sexual violence against minors: outraged police officers by a forgetful Darmanin. As Minister of Justice, he points out structural dysfunctions in the investigative services while he was Minister of the Interior for four years. (translated)

BFMTV 13h

The historical flow of the Danube has dropped, leading Romania to consider shutting down its last operational nuclear reactor due to the energy crisis caused by extreme weather conditions and record levels of drought. (translated)

Le débit du Danube est tombé ce mardi à un nouveau plus bas historique: la Roumanie risque d'arrêter son dernier réacteur nucléaire en service

Jag har tidigare belyst hur Region Stockholm satsar miljoner på så kallade ”kulturdoulor” – personer som ska hjälpa utrikesfödda kvinnor som inte behärskar svenska med VIP-service för att navigera i vården på sina egna språk. Nu framkommer något betydligt allvarligare. Stockholms hälso- och sjukvårdsregionråd Talla Alkurdi (S) har enligt Kvartals granskning drivit igenom ett avtal på 24 miljoner kronor med en doulaförening utan en vanlig annonserad offentlig upphandling. Det finns varken någon skriftlig bedömning eller utvärdering, någon dokumenterad marknadsanalys eller någon dokumentation som visar varför just Föreningen Mira valdes som leverantör i mångmiljonavtalet. Det här är inte längre bara en fråga om en absurd politisk prioritering. Det handlar om missbruk med skattemedel. Jag har svårt att se hur Talla Alkurdi kan sitta kvar efter detta. Skattebetalarnas pengar är inte en politisk lekstuga. https://t.co/rup5qPcbEi #Stockholm #Vård #Skatter

L
Le Soir 14h

A container of picric acid, an explosive chemical, was discovered in an old laboratory in Mouscron, requiring the intervention of the bomb disposal service to secure the area and carry out the explosion of the product. (translated)

Un produit explosif découvert dans un ancien laboratoire à Mouscron

A Crown Instead of the Barracks: An Idea From Outside the Box Could Egypt’s exiled opposition use constitutional monarchy to dismantle the legitimacy of the 1952 coup? By Adham Hasanin Egyptian journalist and political writer, based in the Netherlands To understand what follows, a reader unfamiliar with Egypt needs one basic fact: since 1952, Egypt has never been governed by anyone who did not first wear a military uniform. Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat, Hosni Mubarak, and today Abdel Fattah el-Sisi four men, four eras, one common origin. All rose through the armed forces. All inherited a state built by a coup that year, when a group of officers calling themselves the "Free Officers" overthrew King Farouk I and, within a year, abolished the monarchy altogether and declared a republic. For seventy-three years, the underlying equation has not changed: the army rules, power passes from one officer to the next, and legitimacy is drawn from the barrel of a gun rather than the ballot box. Every conceivable form of opposition has been tried legal parties and banned ones, Islamist movements, liberal and leftist coalitions, the 2011 popular uprising, and the 2013 elections whose result was overturned by force within a year. All of them hit the same wall: a military institution that reproduces itself under different names, while the core of the system remains untouched. So what if the problem, all along, has not simply been who rules, but the constitutional framework that makes military rule possible in the first place? And what if the answer lies not in swapping one president for another, but in dismantling the underlying equation itself, through a framework Egyptian opposition movements have never seriously tried: a purely ceremonial constitutional monarchy, on the model of Belgium, the Netherlands, or Spain where the head of state becomes a symbol above the political fray, while the army is permanently expelled from politics and returned to its barracks. This is not a call to revive a particular family, nor nostalgia for a golden age that never quite existed. It is a proposal for a political and strategic tool that has not yet been used in the intellectual arsenal of Egypt’s opposition in exile a tool that deserves serious discussion, regardless of whether it is ever literally realised or simply serves to expand the boundaries of what is politically thinkable. I. Why 1952, Not 2013 or 2011, Is the Root The strategic error made by most Egyptian opposition movements from the Muslim Brotherhood to the April 6 Youth Movement to the various civil opposition parties has been treating each political crisis as an isolated case: Mubarak was corrupt and had to be toppled; Sisi staged a coup that must be condemned; the interim military council was a transitional phase to be endured. This piecemeal approach treats the symptoms while leaving the original illness untouched. That original illness is the very structure of legitimacy established by the coup of 23 July 1952. The Egyptian republican system, from Nasser to today, has never built its legitimacy on a genuine democratic social contract. Instead, it has rested on a fixed trinity: the rhetoric of "revolution against feudalism and colonialism," charismatic individual leadership, and military protection of the regime framed as the guarantor of stability. This trinity has repeated itself from Nasser to Sadat to Mubarak to Sisi, with only cosmetic variations. Each new president was never a break from the system he was its continuation. When the opposition says "let us return to the constitutional framework that preceded the coup," it is not criticising a particular policy. It is declaring that the legal foundation of everything that came after 1952 was illegitimate from the start. Here lies the rhetorical power of "returning to the pre-1952 order": it does not merely demand swapping one ruler for another. It withdraws historical legitimacy from the entire republican military system including today’s regime, which draws its own declared legitimacy from that same "1952 legacy." II. Why a "Ceremonial Crown," Not "the Return of a Ruling Family" Here is the most important distinction anyone advocating this idea seriously must grasp: the project does not rest on restoring any particular individual from the Muhammad Ali dynasty, nor on nostalgia for King Farouk or his ancestors. The real power of the idea lies in the constitutional form, not in the person who happens to sit on the throne. Three successful European democracies illustrate the model clearly. Belgium, where King Philippe is a purely constitutional symbol with no real executive power, while the state is run through an elected parliament and a complex coalition government reflecting the country’s linguistic and political diversity. The Netherlands, where King Willem-Alexander formally opens the parliamentary year and signs laws, but where actual decision-making rests with the prime minister and the elected parliament. And Spain, where the king represents symbolic continuity of the state above party politics, while the military and security services answer entirely to civilian authority a transition achieved after the death of the dictator Francisco Franco in 1975, when King Juan Carlos I voluntarily relinquished the extensive executive powers he had inherited and backed free elections, most dramatically in February 1981, when he personally ordered the armed forces to remain loyal to the constitution during an attempted military coup, causing it to collapse within hours. The common thread across these three models is not "the presence of an ancient royal family." It is the principle of separating symbol from power. The monarch in these countries does not rule; he represents. He issues no political decisions; he provides the continuity and symbolic stability that allows party political competition to revolve beneath him, without every transfer of power becoming an existential crisis of legitimacy. This is precisely what Egypt’s military republican system lacks: a neutral mechanism for guaranteeing state continuity that does not depend on the person of the ruler or his security apparatus. When Egypt’s military-republican president is absent, it is always the army that fills the vacuum, because it is the only institution built to be the "guarantor of stability." Under a ceremonial monarchical model, by contrast, it is the king not the army who represents that symbolic guarantee, genuinely opening the door to removing the military institution from the political equation altogether. III. Egypt’s Standing Under the Monarchy: An Honest Reckoning, Not Blind Nostalgia For a Western reader with little prior knowledge of Egypt’s monarchical period (1922–1952), it helps to know this: Egypt was nominally independent under its own king from 1922, but Britain retained enormous informal control over the country’s foreign policy, military bases, and the Suez Canal throughout the period a reality that shaped everything that follows. Any honest invocation of "Egypt’s standing under the monarchy" must avoid the trap of mythologised nostalgia that many advocates of this idea fall into. Egypt in that era was no lost paradise, and any honest article must say so plainly. The Egyptian pound, for instance, often invoked as a symbol of "national currency strength" in that period, was not strong because of independent Egyptian monetary policy. It was pegged to the British pound sterling as part of Egypt’s complete colonial financial dependency until 1947, with Egypt exercising no independent oversight of its own currency whatsoever. The pound’s strength, in other words, was not a sovereign Egyptian achievement it was a reflection of British imperial power ruling Egypt from behind the throne. But this does not mean Egypt lacked a genuine regional standing worth studying. Cairo, in the 1930s and 1940s, was the undisputed cultural capital of the entire Arab world: the Egyptian film industry produced more than half of all Arabic-language cinema; its theatre scene, led by figures like Youssef Wahbi and Naguib al-Rihani, and its music, with Umm Kulthum and Mohammed Abdel Wahab, set the standard across the region; Cairo University was the first modern university in the Arab world; and the Egyptian press was the reference point for Arab public opinion from the Atlantic to the Gulf. Cairo was, quite simply, to the Arab world what Paris was to Francophone Europe: an unrivalled centre of cultural and intellectual gravity. This standing was not necessarily a product of monarchy itself, so much as a product of a relative space of political and press pluralism that allowed Egyptian civil society to flourish, despite all the flaws of the political system and the interference of both palace and occupier. The lesson here is not "bring back the king and the standing will return." It is: when even a limited margin of civic freedom exists, Egypt flourishes culturally and intellectually almost by its own nature. And that margin is precisely what has been entirely absent across the past seven decades of unchallenged military rule. IV. What Reform Would Actually Require Not Repeating the Old Mistakes Any serious advocacy of this model must include, even briefly, a clear vision for avoiding the flaws of the old monarchical system itself otherwise the proposal collapses into simply replacing one form of authoritarianism with another wearing a different crown. First, the armed forces would need to be placed fully under a civilian ministry of defence, with its budget subject to transparent parliamentary oversight the exact opposite of its current status as a state-within-a-state, and equally opposed to its role under the monarchy, when it often served as an instrument of British influence. Second, a judiciary fully independent of both palace and government alike, unlike the old model, which saw direct royal interference in political life as when King Fuad I dismissed the elected government of Prime Minister Saad Zaghloul’s successor, Mustafa al-Nahhas, in 1928, in one of the clearest "constitutional coups" in modern Egyptian history. Third, a parliament that genuinely represents the people rather than landowners and the aristocracy, as was the case before 1952, when membership in the Senate was effectively conditional on the ability to pay land taxes meaning political representation was, by law, restricted to the wealthy. Fourth, genuine economic sovereignty, with a truly independent national currency rather than one pegged to a foreign power’s currency, unlike the historical dependency of the Egyptian pound on sterling. These four principles are enough to clarify that the project on offer is not a literal "return to the past," but a borrowing of the constitutional form (symbolic monarchy) combined with an explicit rejection of its old substance (colonial dependency, palace interference, parliamentary feudalism). V. The Role of Egyptian Movements in Exile: Between Goal and Instrument This raises the most practical question of all: how might Egypt’s opposition abroad actually adopt this idea, and in what capacity? The honest answer is that the power of this proposal does not necessarily lie in its literal fulfilment, but in its dual strategic function. On one hand, it can be advanced as a genuine political goal adopted by broad coalitions of Egyptian movements coalitions that might include Islamists, liberals, leftists, and traditional monarchists, united around a single shared premise: rejecting the legitimacy of the 1952 order and everything that followed from it, even if they later disagree over the precise final shape of the state. On the other hand and this matters more in practice the idea can be deployed as a rhetorical instrument of pressure to widen a Egyptian political debate currently trapped between two false choices: "continued military rule" or "no alternative, chaos awaits." When the opposition puts forward a clearly defined third model a European-style constitutional monarchy it breaks this false binary and opens new intellectual space in Egyptian public discourse, even if the project is never realised in its literal form. This kind of "leverage idea" is common in the history of political movements worldwide: it is not necessarily proposed to be fulfilled immediately in full, but to redraw the boundaries of the politically possible, and to force the existing regime to defend its legitimacy rather than simply assume it. Conclusion: An Invitation to Debate, Not a Ready-Made Prescription This article does not claim that restoring a monarchical form would magically resolve Egypt’s chronic crisis of legitimacy, nor does it ignore the immense difficulties facing any transformative project under a military institution as economically and securitywise entrenched as Egypt’s is today. But it raises a question that deserves serious debate among Egypt’s opposition in exile, rather than automatic dismissal simply for being unfamiliar: Has the Egyptian opposition exhausted every available tool for dismantling the legitimacy of 1952, or has it remained trapped in the same old binary swapping one ruler for another while the framework that makes military rule possible remains untouched? The idea is on the table now, not as a finished solution, but as an overdue invitation to think outside the box.

🌞 18h

Stop à l’américanisation de la société ! en France le service est compris et le pourboire est un BONUS qui vise à RÉCOMPENSER un EXCELLENT service… et sur des petits montants comme un verre à 10€ qui laisse 10% de son addition mtn ?? crazy #France #Service #Pourboire

Yes, Germany has managed its public finances infinitely better than we have, but the price has been the deterioration of its public services in their maintenance and modernization. (translated)

Delfi 20h

Poland and the Baltic states are strengthening the protection of their infrastructures due to fears of Russian provocations, including false flag attacks, according to intelligence assessments, while defense ministers emphasize the need for increased vigilance in the face of a growing hybrid threat. (translated)

Reuters: страны Балтии и Польша усиливают защиту инфраструктуры из-за опасений российских провокаций
OManiaque 20h

Selon @laprovence, Genesio et son staff ont fait comprendre à Kelyann Bezahaf, qu’au regard du contexte économique et du calendrier (chargée par la Ligue Europa), il devait se tenir prêt à rendre service cette saison. L'#OM refuse de le prêter. https://t.co/eZa7EYIQgn #OM #Football #LigueEuropa

BFMTV 21h

The parent company of the Truth Social network, Trump Media & Technology Group, announced a net loss of $238.1 million in the second quarter, exacerbated by the impairment of its digital assets, and launched a priority access service for Donald Trump's posts in an attempt to recover, prompting accusations of corruption from the opposition. (translated)

Avec 630 millions de pertes depuis janvier, la maison mère du réseau Truth Social est aux abois, mais la société compte se renflouer en vendant les posts de Donald Trump aux marchés

Senators Ron Johnson and Rand Paul have released the first series of text messages from the service iPhone of Dr. Anthony Fauci. In a conversation from January 2021, Fauci, Rochelle Walensky, then director of the CDC, and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy discussed. (translated)

Constructive call today with Oscar Lopez @oscarlopeztwit, Minister for Digital Transformation and Civil Service of Spain, regarding the situation in Ceuta and how to prevent such dangerous and illegal journeys and the tragic loss of life. #DigitalTransformation #Ceuta #HumanRights #ES

« Ce soir, le cœur de l’Europe est avec le peuple colombien après le terrible tremblement de terre dans la région du Chocó. Nous avons déjà mobilisé Copernicus, notre service satellitaire, pour faciliter les opérations de secours »

L’UE est prête à « apporter davantage d’aide » après le séisme en Colombie
www.lesoir.be
L
Le Soir 1d

The European Union, through its president Ursula von der Leyen, announced that it is ready to provide additional aid to Colombia after a devastating earthquake, having already mobilized its Copernicus satellite service to support relief operations. (translated)

L’UE est prête à « apporter davantage d’aide » après le séisme en Colombie

We are with you. (translated)