Jacobin Magazine: Center-Left in No Man’s Land

But there was also the success of Benoît Hamon. And I think that came about because left voters wanted to feel like they were voting for something rather than simply against things all the time. They accepted a utopian program because there has been so much despair over the last five years. They used the primary to support a “futur désirable” (“desirable future”), which is Hamon’s slogan. His program was quite ecological, much moreso for example than the program of Arnaud Montebourg, which was more classically leftist. [...]

Hamon was more popular with the media and eventually succeeded with a clear, ambitious, and strategic agenda. Campaigning on universal basic income, decriminalizing drug use, and so on won over leftist electors. Additionally, he performed quite well in televised debates, which contributed to a youthful image that was important in allowing him to dispel early notions that he was a career politician. This strange mixture of factors along with his focus on running a “positive campaign” — he did not attack Hollande directly, for example — contributed to his success in the primary. [...]

It has been quite striking. There has been a lot of discussion of the European Union in the campaign — and out of eleven candidates, only two are uncritical: François Fillon and Emmanuel Macron. There have been extreme-right criticisms and some left variants but overall a critical stance has become dominant among a majority of candidates. Specifically, the question is often framed in terms of Plan A and Plan B. Plan A means a reconstitution of the terms of France’s involvement, whereas Plan B would be an exit.

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Vox: Marine Le Pen is trying to win the French elections with a subtler kind of xenophobia

When Marine was just 8 years old, her family’s apartment building was bombed, destroying 12 apartments and injuring two adult and four children. No one in the Le Pen family was harmed, but French authorities came to believe it was an attack aimed at her father for his far-right views. The bombers were never caught. [...]

The original far-right supporters were very often religious, or at least believing, Catholics. Marine is twice divorced. A mother of three, she now lives with her longtime partner, a man named Louis Aliot, whom she has not married. She has been very vocal about women’s rights and refuses to oppose abortion or contraception. Her closest aide is gay. The original FN was considered homophobic; Marine has won gay supporters. [...]

Marine, on the other hand, had begun to try to reach out to Jews, in a slow but steady effort to untangle herself from the party’s anti-Semitic reputation. In January 2005, she sat down with the Jerusalem Report, an Israeli news magazine, and opined that Jews should turn to the FN for help against those from Muslim immigrant neighborhoods who had carried out attacks on Jewish targets around the country that prompted a country-wide concern about a new anti-Semitism. Beginning with the second intifada in 2000, tensions between Jews and Muslims in France had increased dramatically. [...]

“She wants to campaign on the core issues of the National Front: immigration and identity,” says Jean-Yves Camus, an expert on the far right. “It is on those topics that she is really different from the mainstream conservative party. And we all know that immigration is the first and foremost topic when you ask people who vote for the National Front.”

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The Intercept: Trump Hopes Paris Attack Boosts Le Pen, One Day After Obama Calls Macron

Trump’s barely concealed endorsement of Le Pen — who wants to deport or prosecute more than 10,000 people on a terrorism watchlist and take France out of the European Union — comes one day after his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, tried to boost the chances of the centrist, pro-European candidate, Emmanuel Macron, with a friendly phone call trumpeted by Macron’s campaign. 

Despite the hopes of Trump, and his strategist Steve Bannon, who previously championed Le Pen through rapturous Breitbart News coverage, it remains unclear if the majority of French voters, who tell pollsters they will vote for anyone but Le Pen if she makes it to a second-round runoff, will be swayed by the shooting. [...]

In other news that might have gotten more attention if not for the attack in Paris, Francois Fillon, the center-right candidate polling in third place, suggested that a journalist who was interviewing him had failed to understand his platform because she was pregnant during the campaign, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the left-wing candidate surging in recent weeks, welcomed the endorsement of Pamela Anderson, who praised his promise to offer asylum in France to Julian Assange.

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The Conversation: Cycling to work: major new study suggests health benefits are staggering

Cycling or walking to work, sometimes referred to as active commuting, is not very common in the UK. Only three per cent of commuters cycle to work and 11% walk, one of the lowest rates in Europe. At the other end of the scale, 43% of the Dutch and 30% of Danes cycle daily. [...]

We then grouped our commuters into five categories: non-active (car/public transport); walking only; cycling (including some who also walked); mixed-mode walking (walking plus non-active); and mixed-mode cycling (cycling plus non-active, including some who also walked).

We followed people for around five years, counting the incidences of heart disease, cancers and death. Importantly, we adjusted for other health influences including sex, age, deprivation, ethnicity, smoking, body mass index, other types of physical activity, time spent sitting down and diet. Any potential differences in risk associated with road accidents is also accounted for in our analysis, while we excluded participants who had heart disease or cancer already. [...]

We found that cycling to work was associated with a 41% lower risk of dying overall compared to commuting by car or public transport. Cycle commuters had a 52% lower risk of dying from heart disease and a 40% lower risk of dying from cancer. They also had 46% lower risk of developing heart disease and a 45% lower risk of developing cancer at all.

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Motherboard: Great Britain Is Leaving the Coal Age—For a Whole Day

The UK is poised to go an entire day without using any energy from coal sources, according to British electricity network National Grid—the first time Britain will have done so since the late 19th century.

Britain's reliance on coal has been falling steadily since the 1950s and peak coal production, some 287 million tonnes, occurred way back in 1913. But at around 11pm tonight, the UK is expected to witness an entire 24-hour period passing without electricity generated by coal, as alternative power sources such as wind, solar, and nuclear become more popular and the warming months reduce electricity demand in the country. [...]

The importance of coal in the UK power economy may have dwindled quickly of late, but it may still have a part to play in the future, Staffell suggested. It's likely that for several years to come, coal could be useful as an on-demand energy source to help the National Grid deal with peak periods.

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