Half a sentence about three people dead, 3 paragraphs about disrupting nickle production.

Watch this get nowhere near the level of attention or calls for help that Hong Kong got

disrupted nickel production

well that's a succinct way to summarize why France is still occupying them

Wow this is so fucking colonialist. We are in 2024, not 1700. Surreal. I hope those troops get what they deserve and macron faces public revolt in his flesh. French need to bring back the old tradition asap

Reading up on the last independence vote:

In November 2021, "a group of 64 Pacific experts from around the world" signed an opinion piece in Le Monde calling for the French government to postpone the referendum, suggesting that failure to include the Kanak population could lead to a repeat of the civil unrest of the 1980s.

To quote Orson Welles:

"Ahhh, the French."

Not surprising - I watched this video about France's ongoing colonialism in Africa a few months ago, showed a side of them I never considered, at least in the modern era:

https://youtu.be/fiD24uEvY1U?si=kqH-ixnhSvc4S_HG

Suddenly, the Libyan adventure last decade makes more sense.

so, i didn't know shit about New Caledonia and decided to dive a little, especially with the opening graf putting the "disrupted nickle production" on front street right there next to people dying.

from the article:

The most recent protests are centered on a draft constitutional change being examined by French lawmakers that would modify voting conditions in the territory. As of now, only people who have been in New Caledonia for a certain length of time are able to vote in elections, effectively excluding residents who came after 1998 even if they were born there.

more on the "modifying voting conditions" later....

from the natopedia, some additional context:

In the 2018 [independence] referendum, 56.7% of voters chose to remain in France.

In the 2020 referendum, this percentage dropped with 53.4% of voters choosing to remain part of France.

The third referendum was held on 12 December 2021. The referendum was boycotted by pro-independence forces, who argued for a delayed vote due to the impact caused by the COVID-19 pandemic; when the French government declined to do so, they called for a boycott. This led to 96% of voters choosing to stay with France.

huh, looks like the trend was pretty obvious and that the latest referendum was bunk.... now let's get back to the "modified voting conditions"

As part of the Nouméa Accord of 1998, the population of New Caledonia continue to vote in national elections—French president and National Assembly—but the number of people who can vote in provincial elections as well as independence referendums is restricted. This so called "frozen electorate" consists only of those who were already living in New Caledonia in 1998 as well as their children, with the condition that they lived continuously on the Islands in the ten years previous to each election. This effectively deprived of voting rights the later migrants and their children from European France as well as the important local community originating from Polynesia, in particular from Wallis and Futuna. Excluded voters amounted to 8,000 in 1999, 18,000 in 2009 and 42,000 in 2023. That last year, the frozen electorate numbered 178,000 while the total electorate able to vote in national elections amounted to 220,000, thus excluding one voter out of five from participating in provincial elections.

The refusal of the <> to recognize the result of the third referendum, which they boycotted, led to an institutional deadlock as local talks ground to a halt, while the next provincial election—scheduled for 15 December 2024—loomed closer. On 26 December 2023, the Conseil d'État concluded that the current rules deviate in a particularly significant way from the principles of universality and equality of suffrage, by denying the right to vote people born in New Caledonia or who have resided there for several decades.

if you'd like the pepper the gumbo even more, check out the size and demographic characteristics of the french military presence there. On hon hon hon! Le cochon a faim!

and finally, let's get to the center of this bon bon:

New Caledonian soils contain about 25% of the world's nickel resources.