{"id":271371,"date":"2017-03-27T10:38:38","date_gmt":"2017-03-27T14:38:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/?p=271371"},"modified":"2020-08-28T17:08:56","modified_gmt":"2020-08-28T21:08:56","slug":"go-learn-geography-internet-goes-wild-over-presidential-candidate-macrons-french-guiana-mishap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/id\/go-learn-geography-internet-goes-wild-over-presidential-candidate-macrons-french-guiana-mishap\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Go learn geography\u2019: Internet goes wild over presidential candidate Macron\u2019s French Guiana mishap"},"content":{"rendered":"
RAEL\u2019S COMMENT:<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n
Funny\u2026 but it\u2019s important to remember that France remains the only European country with a colony in South America\u2026 Of course, French people are always fighting against Brazil trying to protect Amazonia by destroying it and harassing Guiana original inhabitants, called Indians, in this colony\u2026<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron has made a geography gaffe, mistaking the country\u2019s overseas territory French Guiana for an island, leaving netizens in a tizzy.<\/p>\n

Macron, who is on a tour of France\u2019s overseas territories, expressed concern over the escalating tensions caused by a general strike in French Guiana on Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s been happening in French Guiana over the past few days is serious. My first response is a call for calm, because blocking the airport runways and takeoffs \u2013 and sometimes even blocking off the function of the island itself \u2013 is not the response to the situation,\u201d\u00a0Macron said.<\/p>\n

In fact, French Guiana, one of five French overseas territories, isn\u2019t an island at all, but part of the coast of South America and the second largest region of France.<\/p>\n

Journalists didn\u2019t seem to pick up on the mistake at first either, but the gaffe was later lampooned in the French media under headlines such as:\u00a0\u201cMacron and Guiana the \u2018island\u2019\u201d\u00a0and\u00a0\u201cMacron and his blunder\u201d.\u00a0Le Parisien even published\u00a0a quiz so that readers could find out if they knew French geography better than the presidential candidate.<\/p>\n

The Internet went wild, too.<\/p>\n

\u201c[The French] Guiana by Macron,\u201d\u00a0one tweet said, adding some (ir)relevant pictures.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s you Macron, who is a grave [situation]! You want to be the president of our country, and you think that Guiana is an island! Our French [citizens] of Guiana will be pleased,\u201d\u00a0another user wrote in the comments below the YouTube video showing Macron making the mistake.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe wants to become president… Go learn some geography first!\u201d\u00a0another user posted on YouTube.<\/p>\n

Another Twitter user posted a photo of Macron supposedly searching for French Guiana on the web with a cover of Jules Verne\u2019s\u00a0\u2018Mysterious Island\u2019\u00a0posted just next to it.<\/p>\n

People also recalled previous mistakes made by French government officials.
\n\u201cWith Hollande we found Macedonia, with Duflot Japan in the southern hemisphere, with Macron Guiana island,\u201d\u00a0a user tweeted.<\/p>\n

Earlier, French President Francois Hollande made some gaffes too, paying tribute to the\u00a0\u201cChinese people\u201d\u00a0during a visit to Japan and saying France\u00a0\u201chas taken note of the situation in Tunisia\u201d\u00a0when\u00a0questioned about Egypt.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.rt.com\/viral\/382468-macron-guiana-island-gaffe\/<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RAEL\u2019S COMMENT: Funny\u2026 but it\u2019s important to remember that France remains the only European country with a colony in South America\u2026 Of course, French people are always fighting against Brazil trying to protect Amazonia by destroying it and harassing Guiana original inhabitants, called Indians, in this colony\u2026  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":271414,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-271371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}