Hi folks!
This is Weekly Review #15, and time flew for me too!
I'm on the train.
We left Florange, and we're on the train from Metz to Paris right now.
I haven't had a minute to film all this today,
but I do it anyway because we have to keep making one video a week.
I was in Florange where we had a public meeting last night.
I think it was an important event for me this week,
because it was the first time I ever did a meeting in three  parts.
I did the first part outside, because there were people there, and I just couldn't leave them outside and not...
—not only greet them, but I also wanted to spend some time with them,
because I was told that the apparent temperature was -15°C!
I guarantee you that I must have talked outside for around 20 minutes and
I was as cold as an ice cube,
and when I did the second part of the speech in the hallway,
it felt like being in a soft cocoon compared to when I was outside.
And then I finished my speech in the hall.
It was an important event to me, because Florange is a symbol.
It is the martyr region of our country.
The Fensch valley was the heart of the French steel industry.
But we know what is left of it after authorities repeatedly gave up on the French steel industry—we all know it!
This is a long story, and a beautiful one, because the steel industry is a real culture in the Fensch valley.
But from a larger point of view, it is a horrible story that tells how the measures of the EU are a dead end,
and that shows the gap between what they say and what they do.
ArcelorMittal—it's called ArcelorMittal.
It is composed of the Indian group Mittal and of Arcelor.
Arcelor was the joint venture of a large European productive apparatus.
It was supposed to become the equivalent of Airbus in the steel industry.
I'm not going to explain to you why  there won't ever be an Airbus again as it was at the time,
but it's because Europe forbids anticipated payments and state subsidies which allowed Airbus to exist.
Anyway, the case of Arcelor is even more lamentable, because one day a tender offer was made
—a tender offer is the purchase of a company by another.
It is called a hostile takeover when a company tries to acquire another company by force
although the company that is for sale doesn't want to be sold.
So that's how it happened.
Mr. Mittal bought Arcelor, which became Arcelor-Mittal
And of course, he did what all big companies always do in those cases,
they change order books, they merge production units, etc etc.
Everyone follows this from afar, and it's normal, no one really understands the steel industry
but when you look at it closely,
you clearly see that the steel industry is a typically cyclic industry.
Sometimes, you need a lot of steel, and sometimes a lot less.
And for this you need to...
—and since a huge amount of capital assets is tied to these sites,
finances have to be sturdy to withstand those variations.
When the drop is too high, an ordinary entrepreneur has to close his company or sell it for a lower price.
But that's a problem when there's an increase in steel demand.
It regularly happens in the steel industry and ArcelorMittal was no exception.
Anyway, Florange is a place that was wrecked by all these decisions,
hostile takeovers, the typical variations of the steel industry,
and by leaders who don't know what they want,
who don't know if they want to nationalize or not...
—anyway, all these problems!
But I did not go there to feel nostalgic,
even though I was delighted to recite part of the song "Les Mains D'or" (Hands Of Gold).
"At night they look like warships, beaten by the waves, tormented by the sea, "
"fallen on their side, slapped by the tide, defeated by money, monsters of steel"
"I would like to work again, work again, and forge this red steel with my hands of gold"
"work again, work again, red steel, hands of gold"
And, well, these verses move me,
what I did not realize though was the emotion felt by my two friends whom you see on the video
as I talked—they both are steel workers—
And there was the CGT union representative Lionel Burriello
—he is the branch representative for Florange, the site—
and, well, they were very very touched.
We chatted about it afterwards together, and he told me "you nearly had me crying",
but it would have been uncomfortable had we made him cry during the meeting.
Anyway!
So, I think anyone can understand the interest in having a quality metallurgy industry
Usually, people aren't interested in metallurgy
or, maybe they understand about the thin steel sheets used to make cans.
Everyone has had a canned drink at least once in their life.
Those are typical products from the steel industry.
And, granted, it is not the most complex aspect.
What is complex is to produce a very pure steel in order to make products of high industrial interest out of it.
For instance, you must have heard that we have a problem with nuclear power plants,
which concerns the quality of the steel —but it doesn't come from Florange!
The steel that is used in these plants is not as pure as it should be.
There is just too much carbon in it, and since those parts are placed within a reactor
they are subject to thermal shocks—sometimes it's very hot, and sometimes a lot less.
When there happens to be residual carbon in unacceptably high quantities in the steel's structure, it makes it brittle.
I believe that knowing this, everyone understands that for a millionth of extra grams of carbon,
machinery can break down, with potentially catastrophic consequences in the case of a nuclear power plant.
See, those are the stakes of having high quality production and techniques.
You have to think about it, otherwise you can't understand why it is so important to us all,
and why it is we are so keen on making sure we have quality production sites and good quality products
—and we're going to need them more and more!
Whether you agree or disagree, we will always need to make steel
to build wind turbines, water turbines, and all these machines we need
in order to transition to a 100 % sustainable energies, and to get rid of nuclear power plants
and all these reactors and facilities where steel is of poor quality.
This new steel needs to be of top quality.
This is a discussion we had with the two unions that accepted to see me before we started the meeting,
the CGT and the CFDT.
We didn't have a typical discussion about wages, employment and all that,
but we talked about skills.
My question was whether we were capable of producing this kind of steel that we'll need or not,
and they had their own questions.
These two unions were very concerned with the issue of the ecological production of steel.
Most people aren't familiar with this issue,
but the workers of this industry are,
and they feel concerned about it.
When you make a ton of cast iron,
in order to make these sorts of parallelepipeds called slabs,
well when you make a ton of cast iron, you release two tons of CO2 in the atmosphere—this is quite significant!
So, reducing the quantity of CO2 that is released in the atmosphere when we make steel is essential.
And now, there are techniques that enable us to capture the gas that comes out of blast furnaces
in order to reinject it in the blast furnaces—I'm talking about oxygen, CO2 etc.
And of course, this process enables workers to burn iron twice, and to burn it better,
which makes a purer steel and releases less CO2 in the atmosphere.
This issue is important to us.
If we take these issues seriously, we have to take care of these technical aspects,
we can't just say "it's simple, let's do this and that",
and not wonder whether it's possible and how it should be done.
Clearly, if we don't involve the majority of the workers of this industry, this won't work.
We just saw that the steel industry is very important for dealing with nuclear power.
And I'd like to tell you that there are more and more arguments against nuclear power.
And let me remind the simpletons who say that phasing out nuclear power would compel us to go back to candle lighting,
that on the contrary, it's rather if we keep using nuclear power that we'll go back to candle lighting,
because it doesn't work, and this thing is not fluid.
Why? Because there always has to be a precise balance in the electricity system of a country.
We always have to produce the precise quantity of electricity that is needed at any given moment.
An unbalance would cause the collapse of the network.
Nuclear power plants aren't the easiest tool for adjusting the production.
And when there's a cold snap, you suddenly need to produce a lot of electircity,
and since some nuclear power plants are at a standstill right now, well it creates an unbalance.
In this case, we usually import electricity from neighboring countries, but there's a cold snap there too,
so they also use electricity.
All this is a bit complicated, but it leads you back to what I said when I was visiting dams a few weeks ago.
Some people wondered why I was visiting these dams, well that's why!
I know that we need these dams to maintain the stability of the electricity network.
Dams are the easiest equipments to stop or reactivate,
but it doesn't mean  they can work endlessly,
because they have to be full of water,
and therefore, it has to rain.
So dams have to be filled in the spring.
I might be a bit annoying with all these technical issues, but technical aspects must become a political issue.
We can't just say: "How much does it cost? Bla bla", which is the sole concern of smart cookies,
although this is absolute nonsense, because most of the time, they wonder wht is the cost of this or that,
but they never wonder what is the cost of misery and diseases,
or absurd decisions like not doing anything about nuclear power, although we all know there's a problem.
I won't go into details, otherwise this Review will be about electricity only, and everyone will get bored.
I just want to add that this shows why we need to transition to 100 % renewable energies,
and why we need stable and highly flexible energy resources.
Even if we use 100 % renewable energies, we need to use different energy resources,
because relying on wind energies only would be as stupid as relying on nuclear power only.
So we need mixed energy resources and productions that consist in making each area energetically autonomous.
I was in Martinique and Guadeloupe a few weeks ago, and we discussed this issue.
I visited a power station in Guadeloupe too, you know,
the Bouillante power plant whose production comes from the heat of a volcano.
And of course, we did the same with this plant as with other power stations: we sold it!
In the course of the last five years, under the authority of François Hollande, France became famous for
selling nearly all the companies that produced engines capable of producing alternative energy resources.
So thank you François Hollande!
Remember him the day there is a problem,
because if we ever have a problem, it will be because of his carelessness and incapacity to decide.
Now we have to take care of this problem,
and I am determined to do it.
There was bad news this morning,
and I guess everyone heard about it.
We've been told that monkeys might disappear within the next 25 to 50 years.
Monkeys are our cousins!
It's horrible to think about this kind of things.
I recently told you that half of vertebrates were disappearing, do you remember?
I must say I'm rather pessimistic about this,
because I read a book by Elisabeth Kolbert on this issue for Christmas, a book entitled "The 6th extinction".
It deals with this species extinction process caused by climate change and other parameters.
What other parameters? Well human activity!
Human activity! It's because of human activity!
So we can do something about it, because our own activity is responsible for this! We can do something about it!
And last December, the International Geological Society—I think it's the correct name—
decided to name the period we are living in the "anthropocene", after a quite long discussion,
The "anthropocene" refers to the period in which men—human beings more precisly—
disrupt the life of the planet in such a way that they chang its geology.
So this association did not develop fancy abstract ideas, but very concrete ones.
You can detect a new period within the ground layers—the folds of the ground.
You know, there are landforms that show that the Earth...
There are landforms—I don't remember their name—in which we see the different ground layers.
All the historical layers are visible, and our layer will be visible too. It won't be a big layer though!
In 10,000 years, the layer of the period we are living in will be as thick as rolling paper.
And within this thin layer, there will be strange substances that won't be found before or after
— hopefully not after!
—in any case not before, and among these substances, there will be substances from the nuclear industry,
plus the substances that come from military tests that are already there,
and also substances like plastic that are not natural, that are human creations.
Human beings, who are monkeys—because in the beginning, human beings were a monkey variety—
carry more rubble than all the rivers, all the winds and all the avalanches in the world.
Consequently, human beings transform nature.
But they do it in a way that destroys the environment in which we all live,
and in the end, we will all suffer the consequences.
So if we analyze this monkey issue—and if we don't want to be tragic and alarmist—
and if we analyze the reasons that caused this situation, well we find the usual parameters!
We destroy forests!
—in order to take wood, but above all to create meadows in order to rear cattle,
because our civilization is organized around the consumption of meat proteines.
You're supposed to need them, OK?!
I tried to alert the public opinion on this issue...
—I mean I did my bit, because those who did the job were associations, but I did my bit.
I talked about quinoa in order to say that we could consume plant proteins rather than meat proteins,
and all of a sudden, all the scoffers on the planet started mocking me, saying: "What's happening to Mélenchon with his quinoa recipe?"
I even saw mean people who said: "We won't change things by eating quinoa!"—Well yes, you dimwit!
I'm absolutely certain that we will change things by consuming plant proteins.
A lot of people understand the situation.
They know we have to consume plant proteins rather than meat proteins.
You see, what I say is coherent.
Intensive farming is absurd...
because it doesn't take into account the impact it has on nature.
I mean, meadows are useful to regulate CO2 quantities in the atmosphere,
but producing meat is extremely damaging to environment, and we can use alternatives,
so it's really stupid.
Humanity has not always eaten meat as we are doing now, that's not true!
And meat is not produced for you, that's also not true!
It comes from the carcasses of animals that were reared to produce milk,
so you eat a by-product from the dairy industry!
And as you know, milk is produced as a commodity, and in the end, it results in things like the 1000-cow farms,
where these poor animals never breathe the outdoor air nor see any pasture.
They're stacked in these farms and produce methane gas when they burp and fart that is captured and sold,
they're crammed with antibiotics and other substances, because seclusion easily causes diseases,
and then you drink this milk and you eat this meat that comes from this way of organizing farming,
and this has to stop!
Now let me tell you something.
I am glad to learn that some retail chains decided to stop chicken battery farming and other abuses to produce eggs.
I know some people grumble about it, but I don't!
And if I have the opportunity to do so, I will forbid other types of battery farming.
Right now, we're interested in the life conditions of chickens, but if you knew how rabbits are reared, you just couldn't sleep anymore!
And it would be the same if you knew how pigs are reared.
You might wonder why a politician suddenly deals with pigs, chickens etc.
Well, because that's life!
What is life if it's not living things?
Financial records? Money?
Is that it?
What should we do?
Should we admire the beauty of the world around us?
Or should we admire the feats of the eight gangsters who manage to accumulate as much money as the rest of humanity?
This is what we should learn!
The world is full of philosophy lessons today!
People who care about life should deal with these issues!
This presidential election is the opportunity to wonder if we could not change all this once and for all,
and I'm prepared to do this!
Now I'll tell you about something that might seem secondary.
You may have heard that Mrs. Chelsea Manning was just pardoned by President Obama.
This woman is one of the whistleblowers who provided Wikileaks with information...
...Assange being the most famous person in this story.
You probably know Mr. Assange.
He was involved in the Wikileaks network.
He is now locked—or rather, he locked himself in a room of the embassy of Ecuador in London.
He can't leave the room, because he would be arrested if he did, and he fears extradition to the USA.
American authorities are waiting for him in order to have him go through the same crual and inhuman treatment
than Mrs. Chelsea Manning, to which Mr. Obama just put an end.
She was denounced by a hacker to whom she gave information about the intelligence she was leaking,
and she was held incommunicado—that's the way it happens there—
she was treated in horrible conditions, held incommunicado for months,
and then judged by a military tribunal.
In this fantastic American democracy, there are tribunals that we call special courts in France,
—we abolished them in 1981, but not them!
And this so-called military judge sentenced 
Chelsea Manning to 35 years imprisonment.
This woman was treated in such a degrading and inhuman way that she tried to commit suicide.
And that's just one of the examples that were given by associations that defend human rights.
Because you know, talking about the abuses that are inflicted to people by the USA is not politically correct.
North-Americans set a center in Guantanamo, on the island of Cuba,
and they've been torturing prisoners there for around 11 years.
The torture methods that are used there have been voted and approved by the North-American state.
Mrs. Chelsea Manning was so distressed, humiliated and broken that she tried to commit suicide.
Do you know what North-Americans decided to do after she tried to commit suicide?
They decided to punish her by holding her incommunicado, so she tried to commit suicide again!
This is the reality of the United States of America!
And then people think it's great that Mr. Obama pardoned her! What a joke! After all she's been through!
All things considered, this Obama was not such a great president,
because he was not that courageous, he chickened out during his whole term of office,
and he just let things run their course, so much so that it ended up as it always ends up:
when you elect an Hollande or a Clinton—the nationality doesn't matter—you end up with a Trump!
And, Chelsea Manning and Assange's contribution was extraordinary,
because they really broke down the opaque wall that the USA built around their activities.
Thanks to them, we learned that the USA spied on about every country.
We learned that some French political leaders, among which a lot of members of the Socialist Party,
rushed to the American embassy in Paris when the French government refused to take part in the Iraq War
—I mean the second war of 2003.
We'll never be grateful enough to Chirac and De Villepin for sparing us from getting into this quagmire,
and from feeling ashamed of being responsible of the current situation there.
Manning and Assange showed what really happened.
We saw things that we would have never seen otherwise,
like the way a plane destroyed a group of Iraqi civilians that were in no way a threat, for instance,
or the various bombings of civilians
and—let's be frank—the war crimes of the USA
that were as murderous as the war crimes in Aleppo, which shows that clean wars are a fantasy.
I'm not saying this to lessen the horror of any war whatsoever,
it's just that I don't choose between differents horrors,
I don't consider some horrors acceptable and others unacceptable.
As I'm speaking, Bombings continue in Yemen and Mossul,
and you'll notice that protests suddenly ceased,
and that's not fair,
because these poor devils suffer in the middle of this battle.
Once again, civilians are trapped in the middle of a war, and nobody does anything to stop this war,
and yet, the only thing that is worth doing is to stop this war.
Speaking of war, I'd like to tell you about an excellent initiative that was taken by China,
—I'll be criticized for saying this, I know—
but the Chinese government and President Xi Jinping proposed a ban on all the nuclear weapons.
At last, a great power—the leading world power—defends the idea that we must put an end to nuclear weapons again.
This initiative by the Chinese President is excellent,
and we the French should support it.
We should support every initiative that emanates from the UNO, such a wonderful idea in particular,
because no one dealt with this issue anymore.
Not so long ago, this was a major issue during the period of the balance of power between the East and the West,
or as we used to say, the Socialist Bloc and the United States.
Now France's position must be the following—it is the position we've always had—
we agree with the ban on nuclear weapons...
First, we disagree with nuclear proliferation, which means that we refuse that other countries develop nuclear weapons.
Some say: "It's easy to say that, because you the French have nucler weapons".
Yes we do! But does the fact that other countries have it help solving the problem?
Does it help solving the problem? No it doesn't!
So we disagree with nuclear proliferation!
More particularly, we refuse that certain countries have nuclear weapons that threaten neighboring countries.
For instance, the fact that Israel has the bomb is unacceptable, even though they got it by spying on France.
We disagree with India having the bomb, because we know that India does so against Pakistan,
that also armed itself with nuclear weapons.
And, this changes everything!
When you're a country like France or...
any geographically small country,
nuclear weapons are used to deter enemies, which means that we do not accept any war against us,
or any attempt to intimidate us through force.
Any country that would bomb us would instantaneously bombed.
But let's tell it like it is, nuclear weapons are horrible!
Horrible!
Nuclear weapons are posthumous weapons, which means that if you are bombed, you retaliate by striking the enemy
in one, two or three places that cause maximum damage, but it's over for you, you're dead!
So first, nuclear weapons are posthumous weapons: you're already dead when they strike the enemy,
and second, you're not supposed to ever use them, because essentially, they are deterring weapons,
but they're dangerous!
And when you're in a country with a population of a billion people,
a weapon that was strategic
—let's call it an all-or-nothing weapon—
becomes a tactic weapon, which means that countries of that size can take one, two or three strikes before they cease the combat.
So it is very important to us to prevent nuclear proliferation,
and as far as I'm concerned, I have always been in favor of preventing Iran, India or Pakistan to have the bomb,
although I am well aware of the argument that says that we have the bomb.
Now what should we do with or own nuclear force?
Of course, we agree with the fact that all nuclear forces disappear,
but we the French have the right to think about our own defense!
We agree with getting rid of our nuclear weapons on the condition that other countries do the same!
And the countries that must start getting rid of their nuclear weapons are the biggest nuclear powers,
that is, Russia on the one hand,
and the USA on the other hand,
because their nuclear arsenal are powerful enough to destroy  7 or 8 times the planet,
which shows the absurdity of this apparatus, because once it's been struck, it can't be struck again.
Everyone can undertand that.
So you see, this is a very delicate issue to deal with.
It has to be dealt with great aplomb and a lot of determination.
And I'm glad that a great power like China—that has nuclear weapons too,
which explains why its neighbors want to have the bomb!—
...I'm glad that a power like China begin to assume the responsibility of its position in the world,
because obviously, the leading world power has responsibilities towards the rest of the world.
I must say that...
Of course, with all the criticism that can be addressed to the Chinese government...
—in Europe or in the USA, when you talk about certain countries, you have to criticize them to begin with!
And especially now that Mr. Trump decided he wanted to harass China,
you'll see that we're going to have an anti-Chinese atmosphere in France as never before
in all the newspapers and the circles that are under the influence—as they say—of the USA and of North-American security agencies.
I'll avoid mentionning specific newspapers or everyone will fall out with me again,
but you got the point: Xi Jinping did us a service.
Now it's time to say goodbye because...
You don't see it because Antoine is editing,
but there's a constant flow of passengers as I'm speaking—of course there is, I'm in a corridor!
Here we go again!
-Passengers: Hello, excuse us!
-JLM: Hello Madam!
-Passenger: Thank you very much!
-JLM: I'm sorry Mister!
It's all right!
Just a second, someone's passing.
JLM: Sorry! Thank you Mister!
Passenger: Good luck!
JLM: No, thank you!
Passenger: Good luck for the campaign!
JLM: Thank you!
JLM: Ha! It's ticket-checking time!
Conductor: It won't be long!
JLM: Hello!
OK, so, I think it's time to stop this video.
I'm losing my train of thought...
...because of the flow of passengers—but it's normal, this isn't a studio!
The sound is probably not good...
...and in addition to the noise of the train,
you probably hear this damn air conditioning!
I don't know why, but there's the air conditioning everywhere,
and the result is that we who often take the train, we 're always ill—we have this sort of never-ending sinusitis!
So goodbye, and if you want to give a hand to this show,
there's a very simple way to do it: give us the little blue thumbs up,
it contributes to the ranking of this video,
and it makes all sorts of people jealous,
who feel compelled to do weekly reviews too,
but they make a laughingstock of themselves,
and this is a delight!
And now is the time for me to drink a cup of coffee, the best part of taking the train,
but you noticed that we improvised a mug like those we sell in our "L'insoumis(e)" gift boxes.
See?
Goodbye and see you soon!
