French govt. says users of uBlock Origin, Signal etc. are potential terrorists
laquadrature.netThe key is that, while there is suspicion (the people arrested have a far left ideology, have been to Syria to fight against the Islamic state, own weapons and encrypt all of their communications), there is no crime nor proof of an intent to commit a crime.
These people have been sent to prison because they are suspicious, not because of an action they have done (something made possible as a special case of an older antiterrorism law). And, amongst other things, using Signal and Linux with the encryption-on settings are explicitly listed as some of the things making them suspicious in the eyes of the law.
That is a slippery slope.
Yesterday the French government dissolved an environmental movement (which I don't like btw), amongst the reasons stated[0] are that they leave their phones at home or switch them off, refuse to talk to the police when arrested, or even that they organize their protest over the internet.
When accused of authoritarian tendencies the government usually answers "go to China or North Korea to see what a dictatorship is like".
[0] https://twitter.com/mart1oeil/status/1671467485931921408
They have not been dissolved because they left their phone at home, they have been dissolved because it was a violent organisation that was systematically attacking the police and destroying property.
And given the sort of stuff they brought to their protests: swords, machettes, baseball bats, jerrycan, bricks, fireworks, petanque balls, Molotov cocktails, fire bombs, etc, it is particularly disingenuous to pretend they have been dissolved for not talking to the police when arrested.
You can read the actual decret in French: https://twitter.com/GDarmanin/status/1671450289298198528
They indeed sometimes destroyed some properties
But you cannot blame them for the violence in the protest they co-organized. People are free to attend the protest, and they cannot control them. They never called for violence against police. And most protest now in France have some people fighting with the police.
The same way you can see firefighters throwing stuff (including petanque ball) to police during firefighers protest. But you cannot blame the firefigheter union for this.
If it happens once it's accident, if it happens constantly, its their responsibility if not starting a protest at all would prevent the violence
And if they put their label on it it's their responsibility.
So should we apply the same thinking with police constantly inciting violence at protests ? At this point anytime there's a major protest in France, I consider it a win if no one in the crowd lost an eye, hand or worse, their life, from the grenades thrown by police.
Just because someone is a catalyst, I don't see how it logically and necessarily follows that 100% of the causal responsibility falls on them.
This seems objectively reductive and represents ideological beliefs as objective facts.
Maybe the masses are upset and this is a sign of things to come, that should be listened to.
Myself, I'm a peaceful guy, if every protest I called (assuming I'm a "leader" of cause $INSERT_CAUSE_HERE ) resulted in violence, I would not call any more protests because that would go against my personal values. So it's hard to believe a group is peaceful if every time they have a protest it turns into a riot.
Would you be okay with being jailed for destruction of property because of a protest you organised that was co-opted by bad actors?
So now the state can silence you by simply sending plainclothes cops to start riots in all your protests
Then you could not organize any "leftist" protest in France :-) Note that they do destroy stuff, they just don't call violence against people. And definitely don't turn in riot every time
Again, accidents happen, but if you are the catalyst over and over again it's on you.
> This seems objectively reductive and represents ideological beliefs as objective facts.
No, you just didn't liked that thing you like got attacked for the thing they did and are making up excuses.
> Again, accidents happen, but if you are the catalyst over and over again it's on you.
Yeah, they "accidentally" carried swords, firebombs and molotov cocktails to a protest. It was an honest mistake, right? I mean, those are normal things people carry around on a daily basis, aren't they?
> Again, accidents happen, but if you are the catalyst over and over again it's on you.
Technically, it "is on" whoever objectively plays a role in the underlying causality.
You "may" be referring to your perception of what is going on, as opposed to what is actually going on (which is unreachable).
>> This seems objectively reductive and represents ideological beliefs as objective facts.
> No, you just didn't liked that thing you like got attacked for the thing they did and are making up excuses.
Except I have the ability to describe the various ways in which it is (at least plausibly) objectively reductive and represents ideological beliefs as objective facts, whereas you have a much harder problem: proving that you can actually read my mind (or, are omniscient).
If we'd implement what you says, you'd just found a way to systematically prevent protests. Doesnt work.
So we should forbid firefighter and farmer's union ? And all leftist union ? And we should forbid any protest where people using black block technique could agree with ?
I think as long as most of the protests don't end up in violence and shop lootings they could stay.
What do you say to evidence that plainclothes police officers are tasked with infiltrating protests and stirring up shit?
In France, in most of the cases you don't need police officer for it, some people are willing to donage bank or fight with the police (especially after police overreacting, or being violent for free)
The fact is you don't know how will end up protest... And even when a protest end up damaging 1 mac donalds and 2 banks, most people are pacific protester... The question is how do you handle this in a democracy ?
That’s not how protests work though, is it?
The responsibility is 100% on the police. They're the ones who are systematically coming armed to 100% of protests, they're the one gouging people eyes out, pushing people in rivers, causing limbs to be amputated, they're the ones who murdered my 80 yo neighbor during a protest. The ratio of police vs protestors injuries is about 1 vs 10.
Protesting for the survival of the planet we're all living on is not a crime it's a necessity to not go extinct.
Then the state can prevent demonstrations and protests, by paying some of their own men to join as protestors and start throwing stones.
> Then the state can prevent demonstrations and protests, by paying some of their own men to join as protestors and start throwing stones.
Oh, come on, as if that were a thing so common that there had been a specific word for it for nearly 200 years.
That's not a good assessment at all. Because no one holds the government or its police to that standard.
Do you know how many problems in America regarding human rights stem from qualified immunity? Don't let that BS keep spreading.
If some Neo-nazis co-organize a protest, and it becomes violent, do you blame the neo-nazis?
Just wondering if your reasoning is based on logic or political sides.
If the Neo-nazis is protesting something like workers rights, I would probably turn a blind eye. My reasoning is based on ACTIONS
Depend which kind of Neo-Nazi organization (they are illegal in France and most of them in France do like to punch people and say it), and co-organized with whom, and depend on what is saying these Neo-Nazi
But for sure I do blame Neo-Nazi for being Neo-Nazi !
Fighting back against totalitarianism by doing away with freedom of association and assembly. Cute.
No better than the gang laws we have here in the US. It seems Jefferson's rule about 200 years or so between revolutions was right after all.
What about just regular fascists then? Do you blame fascists for violence, perhaps caused by communists?
A significant majority (67%) of the currently active low ranking French police force (not counting the retirees) vote, or at least declare they intend to, for one the parties that has historically been as right wing as one can be.
Taking that into account, one could have reasons to believe cops wouldn’t be as tough on protesting fascists, and that protesting fascists wouldn’t be as violent towards cops.
Though I’d be curious to see wether or not facts support this hunch.
> …, petanque balls, …
While I won't argue with the fact that these are indeed formidable missiles, it does make for a unique French touch.
> "Eh Roger, tu tire ou tu pointe sur le CRS !?"
Okay, so if the government ever wants to shut anything down for any reason, get a few dozen goon squad members to show up as fellow protestors with weapons and cause property damage and smack cops around a little bit?
Pretty much, yes? There's even a French term for it! Agent provocateur. There is no shortage of accusations of such in the US and abroad.
Impressive mix of lies.
The total value of items destroyed has been estimated to be about 8 million by the French state. While not a small number, I haven't seen the antiterrorist police be sent to the FNSEA's headquarters for their history of violence and destruction ever since 1960. It is part of their methods ever since their inception, but greasing some palms high up in the government certainly helps.
>And given the sort of stuff they brought to their protests: swords, machettes, baseball bats, jerrycan, bricks, fireworks, petanque balls, Molotov cocktails, fire bombs, etc, it is particularly disingenuous to pretend they have been dissolved for not talking to the police when arrested.
Violence. Is. Caused. By. The. Police. None of these, not a single one of these items were used until the police started indiscriminately tear gassing thousands of protesters, the vast majority of them peaceful. Five thousand grenades and weapons classified as war weapons used on protesters. Half of the items you mention were taken by the police with roadblocks more than twenty kilometers away. Sorry for driving with petanque balls in my trunk, I guess.
>You can read the actual decret in French: https://twitter.com/GDarmanin/status/1671450289298198528
Sure, let's read the sexual abuser, the national-socialist-journal-writing sack of shit's declaration. One part in particular is very interesting:
Considérant d'autre part que le groupement SLT diffuse a ses membres et sympathisants, via ses réseaux sociaux, des modes opératoires directement inspirés de ceux des <<Black Blocks>>; que parmi ces préconisations figurent le port de tenues interdisant leur identification par les forces de l'ordre, en contradiction avec les habitudes des militants écologistes de manifester a visage découvert, le fair de laisser son téléphone mobile allumé a son domicile ou de le mettre en <<mode avtion>> en arrivant sur les lieux de la manifestation pour éviter le bornage, le fait de ne pas communiquer les codes dévérrouillage de l'appareil ou de ne pas répondre aux forces de l'ordre en cas d'interpellation; qu'y figurent également des consignes d'ordre médical <<en cas de nécessité d'hospitalisation, dans la mesure du possible, se rendre dans un hôpital éloigné de l'action, rester flou, ne pas donner son identité, prévoir de l'argent liquide>>; que par ailleurs est préconisé le port du masque FFP3; de lunettes de protection contre les gaz; ...
For the HNers that to not have the privilege to read the beautiful language of the country of Human Rights, where protesters get arbitrarily arrested in the hospital and in their homes, this is a translation of how they justify being a single step below "declaring ecologist protestors an actual terrorist group":
Considering that the SLT group spreads to its members and sympathizers through social networks, operative modes directly inspired from those of <<Black Blocks>>; that amongst those suggestions include wearing outfits preventing their identification by the police forces; in contradiction with the habit of protesting with their face out usually had by ecologist protestors; the fact of leaving their mobile phones turned on in their homes or to put them in airplane mode when arriving at the protest to avoid triangulation; to refuse to communicate their passwords or to refuse to respond to the police when being arrested; that also contains medical related orders: <<in case of hospitalization, as much as possible, go to a hospital far away from the action, stay quiet, do not give your identity, have some cash>>; that wearing FFP3 masks and gas protection glasses is recommended...
Want to add some more ? Sure. They arrested an EELV member that was not present at any of the protests. Why ? Because he left his phone at home and used it in airplane mode. https://twitter.com/marinetondelier/status/16714362394494935...?
Thanks for the traduction; I haven't seen an account of this yet in UK media.
> Violence. Is. Caused. By. The. Police. None of these, not a single one of these items were used until the police started indiscriminately tear gassing thousands of protesters, the vast majority of them peaceful. Five thousand grenades and weapons classified as war weapons used on protesters.
It's obvious violence must have existed from both side. It's a bit obvious you're from the far left, just be neutral.
I hope you're kidding, but just to be sure: The average position isn't always right. Also, what even is neutral in this case?
I didn't mean him to be neutral in his position but in what he is writing. You can clearly see he is biaised and is anti-police. Like the police is responsible of everything and that people are peaceful protesters while it's not truth, it's not black and white and he is a fool to believe that.
You can ensure that the average position is always more right than you by staying on the left!
So now you're deflecting by "both sides"-ing the issue. Do you not hold the police to a higher standard? It's pretty telling you have to assume the political leanings of the person you're responding to rather than engaging with the argument or quantifying your position.
It's completely unacceptable for any police force to use "crowd control" devices that are explicitly disallowed in warfare under the Geneva Accords. Full stop.
I didn't mean him to be neutral in his position but in what he is writing. You can clearly see he is biaised and is anti-police. Like the police is responsible of everything and that people are peaceful protesters while it's not truth, it's not black and white and he is a fool to believe that.
Neutrality is often the wrong thing to do.
Yeah I meant more like "unbiaised comments" and not black and white comments complaining that one is responsible of everything.
They're voicing their position in writing. There's no way to make that "neutral" unless they have a neutral position. Of course someone on the left is going to write like they're on the left. Likewise, someone on the right is going to write like they're on the right. There's no incentive for people to take the time to neuter their writing just because you disagree with how they stated things. It's not impossible that this is a "black and white" kind of thing in their mind, right?
So, should the FNSEA be dissolved then? https://twitter.com/SebastienM/status/1671842089502494721?s=...
The situation in France is dire and crazy. This will not end well.
I have had well-educated French acquaintences telling me for a decade that France is ripe for a new system of government; the 6th in its history.
Many current problems stem from the fact that post-war mechanisms written into the governmental system are abused by the president and elected leaders. E.g. presidential overruling of parlamental votes.
> I have had well-educated French acquaintences telling me for a decade that France is ripe for a new system of government
First, this is not "well-educated French acquaintences" so much as it is supporters of Melanchon's LFI political party, who explicitely campaign on the idea of ending the 5th republic to start a 6th where all problem would be magically solved.
Second, the reason I hate his proposal, is because he explicitely refuses to give any specific detail on what the 6th republic would be. He claims it would be "decided by the public" but there is no reason why a pre work couldn't be done BEFORE. In effect, he pretends to be saying "we will end the 5th for a better 6th", but what he's actually saying is "let's end the one we have now instead of fixing it, and replace it with something I will have the power to decide, you must accept to throw it away without knowing what you will get in exchange or how it will be made but trust me it will totally be better and I will totally let the people decide".
Our 5th republic might be flawed, but I'm not putting it in the trash without any idea of what we will get in return, that's brexit referendum level of flawed.
And I will always be weary of someone who claims to have a simple solution to a complex problem, on the condition that I give him power over me, especially if another condition is that I cannot know what said solution is before making my decision.
Third,
> the 6th in its history
Would be the 6th republic sure, but absolutely not the 6th "system of government", it would be like our 25th or something ?
Not everybody that want a 6th republic are supporters of Melanchon's party. We have to be careful about this kind of amalgamation.
Given that out of the dozen or so "main political parties" he is the only one who wants that, and that when asked about their priorities for the change of France no group of frenchmen put that in their top 5 besides voters of LFI ...
You're absolutely right that there are definitely some people who want a 6th republic but do not vote or agree with LFI, but for the sake of generalized conversation like we're having now they're mostly irrelevant. If it were to happen, it would be through him and his "vision", and as such I maintain my critics.
Beware of what you want for you might just get it.
I’d add that the mentioned acquaintances apparently aren’t calling for a 6th republic.
Just believe that the country is "ripe for it" because of repeated abuses of the, exceptionally large for a western democracy, presidential powers.
But people have been dissatisfied with that ever since the last constitution was enacted. Including, famously, Mitterrand, who despite his many earlier criticisms (describing the 5th republic as "Le Coup d’État Permanent" [1], which could be translated to "The Continuous Coup") was prompt to fully enjoy those powers once elected himself.
So it’s quite old.
[1]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Coup_d%27%C3%89tat_permanen...
I was thinking that we needed a 6th republic well decades before Melenchon was known and I think he is a dangerous person.
I am probably not the only one.
Not everyone who supported Brexit in the UK was a right wing xenophobe but look where they ended up.
I’m sorry but it’s more than the left. Even right and centrists people who were ok with the retirement reform are saying that they don’t accept how it have been forced on the parliament.
It was one of the most important and most protested reform of the last decades and the president / government used every constitutional breach they could to avoid any vote from people's representatives.
Charles de Courson, who tried to force the vote by proposing an abrogation of the law to the parliament is not really a leftist, he was even going to vote himself in favor of the reform.
We, the French, elected a parliament where Macron didn’t have the absolute majority and Macron tries everything he can to avoid the parliament when he know he will not have enough votes. It’s a democracy crisis wether you are from the left or from the right because Macron is interpreting the constitution like he can dismissal the parliament when he wants although most French didn’t vote for his party.
We celebrate the revolution and throwing out the king while basically electing a new one every five years that will magically solve all of our problems.
We celebrate the revolution while ignoring it went terribly, being in terms of rights, economy or basically anything else, and we happily put an emperor on the throne less than a decade later
I wouldn't say it went terribly in terms of rights, necessarily. The French Revolution was a massive influence on every other post-enlightenment democracy that came after it. Without the French Revolution (and yes, that includes its failures), we very well could all still be living in different versions of feudalism.
The French Revolution paved the way for just about every pro-worker reform in the modern world.
> we happily put an emperor on the throne less than a decade later
to be fair, the emperor climbed on the throne pretty much on his own; I think he had support across broad parts of the population, but it's not as if he was elected (and he didn't even start as an emperor, that came a few years after his coup)
To quote him ;
> I did not steal the crown. I found it lying in the gutter, and I picked it up with the sword. But it was the people who placed it on my head.
The man was massively popular with the populace [1] [2] and he got elected emperor with a referendum [3] to which 7 million people were called. By modern standard that barely qualifies, but for an emperor in 1804 ...
A common misconception was that the revolution was to remove the all powerful head of state. It wasn't, the people just wanted a competent one and improved living conditions.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/277eu3/why_i...
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/gli6nn/consi...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1804_French_constitutional_ref...
> the 6th in its history.
I assume they were alluding to the fact that the current French state is called the “Fifth Republic” but there were various non-Republic regimes as well so it would actually be more than the 6th “system of government”.
The fifth republic is the result of a coup by a military leader (De Gaulle) that was in talks with commanders of tank divisions to drive to Paris should he not be instated president and allowed to write his own constitution (written by Pierre Debré, a friend of his).
It was ripe to burn since 1958.
For those who can read French and who would want to learn more about this I heartily recommend the recently published Gouverner la France [1] (Governing France), a collection of books written by Michel Winock as part of the prestigious Quarto Gallimard series.
It includes titles like L'Agonie de la IVème République (Agony of the Fourth Republic), La fièvre hexagonale : les grandes crises politiques de 1871 à 1968 (Hexagon Fever: Major Political Crises from 1871 to 1968) and a pretty good biography of de Gaulle. It's from that book that I learned of all the craziness of 1958, the one that involved general Salan (who would be sentenced to death a few years after that for trying a coup against de Gaulle) and all.
[1] https://www.amazon.fr/Gouverner-France-Michel-Winock/dp/2072...
Calling it a coup is highly debatable and debated. It happened outside of the scope of what the 4th happened, and it happened because the 4th had broken down and was not working anymore.
It should be noted that some of the main people who called to view it as a coup were people from other parts of the political spectrum who had other ideas of how it should happen and who should end up in power, including Mitterand (who ended up president of the 5th in 1986). These people however were also for the end of the 4th.
The military guys from Algeria had already put their hands on Corsica, plus, the iminent threat of the landing on the shores of Southern France (or via an aerial operation, can't remember exactly) of said military forces was heavily used by de Gaulle during the negotiations that got him into power.
"The iron was hot. I struck it." - De Gaulle
Is this an actual quote? Interested regardless of the topic of this comment thread.
Couldn't find any source online except for this comment. Might be because of tranalation though.
yup. thats why some folks love to call the current political system a "presidential monarchy", due to the overreaching executive powers granted to the president of the republic.
People have been slow-boiled and don't quite seem to realize the closest regime in Europe in terms of concentration of powers is Russia.
It's been awhile since the elite were reminded how easily their heads can be removed by primitive machine and motivated populace.
I blame a lack of access to pitchforks.
Yep. But this is not exactly new. The Macron government is now using "anti-terror" legislation that was passed by both left and right-wing governments over the past 20 years or so.
I'm really curious as to why Macron govt is looked up to by a lot of Americans. American citizens, with all of the country's flaws, tends to have a lot more inherent civil rights than most of these governments.
You always get only a really tiny window of information, selected by your medias, about foreign countries. (It doesn't matter which receiving country you are in, it is a general principle, not just about the USA).
In France, we almost only hear about other countries politics when there is a chance for a far right party to gain something. As far as all other domains are concerned, we may from time to time get a funny/shocking miscellaneous news item, and that's it.
Also, images/stereotypes about a country last a long time, long after they have stopped being true.
Ironically, perhaps the only emitting country that differs a bit is... the USA, for probably most countries over the planet are flooded with information and contemporary culture from the USA.
For example, to get back a bit to the original subject, people may know the American police and justice system better than their own. Like, French people when they are arrested would believe that they have enforceable rights and that rigorous processes are respected. Ah!
Once, in custody, I even had the impudence of requesting a lawyer as I was allowed to. LOL, no way. And it is not simply a problem of a rotten police: the prosecutor, the judges, they are all covering this up, it is the whole police+justice system which 'works' like this.
I think France is generally perceived here to have more progressive social policies regarding labor, education, healthcare and the environment. The limited media coverage I've seen about French elections seemed to paint Macron as the candidate more representative of those values.
Macron is not a fan of theses social policies, he is right leaning. His governement reduced labor protections, butchered educations, worsened public healthcare, and do nothing for the environment.
Economically right-leaning but culturally left-leaning, he's let in tens of thousands of migrants, does not expel them (cf. the "OQTF" stories pretty much every day), and on top of that, uses taxpayers money to fund them throughout the country.
> Economically right-leaning but culturally left-leaning.
Ah yes, the current political Trojan horse.
You are mixing up stuff to fit your scenario. OQTF stories are up to police incompetence, not lax imposed by the governement. Culturally left-leaning if very bold given the recent pension reform debacle, bypassing any democratic recourse. Also very bold statement given the police repression of mosts of the protests.
There is nothing Macron that is left leaning, relative to France politic spectrum.
"not lax imposed by the governement."
>> Interesting. Right-leaning governement (if not "far-right" according to some), but has no control over illegal migrants routinely roaming around committing crimes. I thought a key marker of "the right" was being (too) strict on order and ruthless implementation of the law.
A governement doing badly it's job is a marker of corruption or incompetence, not political alignement.
Im not arguing the point. It's a sad state of affairs. But Le Pen was painted here as a female version of Trump. So that's why Macron was perceived as representative of French progressiveness.
Macron's minister of the interior, Gérald Darmanin, described Le Pen as "too soft". France is not a bi-party system, Macron is not progressive.
The vote (for president) still came down to, "Guy who thinks protecting the workers is the end of the world" or "Lady who seems way too comfortable with actual nazi parties", so americans just had a lot of empathy.
Macron, as so many French leaders before him, is in fact obsessed by transforming France into the US.
Sarkozy, his most alike predecessor, used to wear a t-shirt that said "NYPD" while jogging, as he was president of France; and later renamed his party "Les Républicains" as an hommage to US Republicans (!!?!)
This was 9 years ago, so right before Trump happened. At the time, 53% of party members thought it was "too American" but they accepted the change nonetheless.
Macron pushes through "liberal" reforms (liberal in Europe means the opposite as in the US: liberals here are free-market proponents) because he thinks it will make France great again, I guess.
Fear leads to support for authoritarianism. Covid, climate, nuclear war, economic uncertainty, etc.
I think it is more about fear silences sane people. Not that support for shady things increase. E.g. at work like 2 or 3 out of 20 are phsycotic war mongers to different degrees. There is always this implied "we will shoot you as a traitor if you disagree" if things turn to shit when you deal with that kind of people.
The answer is same as with western commies, coz the ideals speak to them but they never lived by it and are aware of the bad stuff
I was thinking about an uber or courier service that takes your phone for a walk
Pretty much relying on the assumption that investigators will find stationary phones suspicious when they spy on you
Could put them in those charging lockboxes seen as airports and festivals, the infrastructure is already there
Guess I’ll market it to climate activists in europe lol
edit: maybe those delivery robots are even better couriers, since it fits the idea of getting a courier to come back to you better than an uber on the other side of town. risky but the fun kind.
If a stationary phone is suspicious, imagine how suspicious it'll look when prosecutors show someone was using that service.
strength in numbers
Just leave the phone on a bus, somewhere hidden. Then "find" it later, or call the bus service if need be.
I want to charge people a subscription service
Given most activists are at university or are associates with university attendees, you should target it to students. One downside would be that it would only work within term time.
A bunch of radios confusing thousands of gps devices seems better.
Can you fake it with an app somehow instead?
Antenas can ping your location and track your movements. There's nothing you can fake here.
Put your device in front of a vertical metallic plan and have it vertically rotating slowly. You are now walking around your house. Wouldn't this work?
Walking around your house isn’t evading anyone or anything, and it’d be too periodic.
You need wider range, more chaos, but mainly consistent spoofed behaviour.
What is really disturbing for me is that authorities go after such rather well behaving protesters instead of terrorists in disguise as protesters.
>When accused of authoritarian tendencies the government usually answers "go to China or North Korea to see what a dictatorship is like".
China and North Korea exist on completely separate spectrums.
I guess the day they only name North Korea we will know we're done.
Ah ah like when we used to say : Russia, China and North Korea exist on completely separate spectrums.
Honestly the west wanted for China to be more like us but in the end our power hungry politicians made us more like China. And we are on track to be even worse because there are some morons who are actually in favor of police state and “democratically” vote to be policed by the goverment and their cronies.
> the people arrested have a far left ideology, have been to Syria to fight against the Islamic state, own weapons and encrypt all of their communications
Is there a place where we can read more about this? The article seems to explain none of that context, it only purports that people are suspicious and can be arrested for simply having good 'digital hygiene'.
Edit: Some relevant passages from TFA
> Likewise, the critical attitude towards technologies, and in particular to Big Tech (Google, Amazon, Facebook Apple and Microsoft, GAFAM), is considered as a sign of radicalisation. Among the questions asked to the defendants, one can read: Are you anti-GAFA?”, “What do you think of GAFA?” or “Do you feel a certain reserve towards communication technologies?”.
> These questions are to be read in light of one report from the DGSI titled “The ultra-left movement”, which states that “members” of this movement are alledgedly showing “a great culture of secrecy […] and a certain reserve towards technology”.
Don't see any mention of Syria or weapons.
> “members” of this movement are alledgedly showing “a great culture of secrecy […] and a certain reserve towards technology”.
So caring about one's human right to privacy is a "culture of secrecy" now
The desire to be alone has been scientifically proven to be a disease of the mind and a sure sign of antisocial tendencies. (s,lr,d)
Ah yes, because Signal is famously the app you use to be alone and not interact with anyone else
Well the intelligence community certainly is feeling snubbed.
I don't know how you jumped from "privacy" to "desire to be alone", those two things are barely related. Locking the toilet door isn't antisocial and talking to someone in private isn't either.
I believe the French Wikipedia page[0] is the most comprehensive place to get information on the subject. There is also a, much shorter, English page[1].
[0]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affaire_du_8_d%C3%A9cembre_202... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8_December_2020_incident
Does the OP article refer to this specific incident? Or is this a larger phenomenon?
It refers to this specific incident (the OP article is even mentioned at the end of the French Wikipedia page[0]).
[0]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affaire_du_8_d%C3%A9cembre_202...
The op article is specifically about the 8th of December 2020 incident, from beginning to end.
However, it does make the point that it is akin to "L'affaire de Tarnac" that lasted from 2008 to 2018.
I don't know about this concrete case (and my french is not good enough to find out with ease) - but the context is likely, that they joined the YPG at some point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Defense_Units
It was/is a weird situation. They are very anticapitalist and marxist with some anarchist elements, but they got western support when they were fighting ISIS (and to some extent Assad/Putin) in Syria.
So in Syria communist rebells got US weapons and I believe US troops are still on the ground helping them. But back home in the west, those activists get prosecuted, because the PKK (the mother organisation of YPG) is considered a terrorist organisation (and likely they still are doing terrorism, even though it is of course a "separate" organisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan_Freedom_Hawks)
> Likewise, the critical attitude towards technologies, and in particular to Big Tech (Google, Amazon, Facebook Apple and Microsoft, GAFAM)
Like more than half of HackerNews :/
> That is a slippery slope.
you mean as opposed to the people who went to Gitmo for wearing casio F-91W watchs back in the early 2000s[0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_F-91W
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seton_Hall_reports#Detainees...
Both situations are unacceptable, and one cannot be used to justify the other.
It's not really a slippery slope, we've already arrived at the bad thing
yes, here is an article about "preventive detention of a climate activist" in Germany. https://newsrnd.com/news/2023-06-13-before-action-in-regensb...
The issue here is that they seemed to have used the encrypted communications to proof criminal behavior.
This is why we can not, under any circumstances, budge on encryption and privacy. It is a fundamental right and I am willing to die on this hill.
There's no freedom more fundamental than freedom of thought, but anti-encryption violates that imo. At least, it prevents the sharing or workshopping of thoughts. Yeah, I'd literally die on that hill.
No one deserves to be subject to my raw, unrefined thoughts. It's hell enough for me
It really is such a hill, I know it may sound absurd to some people, but invasion of privacy and communications is, by all means, thought policing, and living in such a world is, in my opinion, torture.
Ah, but you see, there's plenty of slope left to slide!
Agreed! Next they will arrest anyone critical of the government and lock them up for using end to end encryption on WhatsApp.
The law doesn't say being suspicious is criminal, but that organising with the intent to commit terrorism is, and that's what the prosecutor's will have to prove.
The real, actual problem is the unlawful detention.
> And, amongst other things, using Signal and Linux with the encryption-on settings are explicitly listed as some of the things making them suspicious in the eyes of the law.
In combination with other things, and in this article there are quotes from interrogations which explicitly ask "have you organised illegal activities through encrypted chat communications".
> have you organised illegal activities through encrypted chat communications
If I did, why in hells name would I tell you?
Why would you ask that in the first place? To catch out the incredibly dumb terrorists?
To put you in prison if they find by some mean you did.
The mean could be a 5$ wrench, hacking into your devices or plain old surveillance
If you lie, they can either put you in prison or deport you if you are not a citizen.
If I lie, and they can prove that I lied (e.g. I organized illegal activities, which is itself illegal) they can do that anyway.
There's absolutely nothing you gain by making it easy for them by telling them that you did.
Criminals tell on themselves every day. Whether that's the truth or not isn't actually to cops.
Yeah, as much as saying 'using encrypted communications' is a very cheap shot by the prosecution, this seems to be the gist of it, the combination and the organization
> The real, actual problem is the unlawful detention.
how is this defined?
It's understandable yet sad that actively fighting against reactionnary movements puts you on a watchlist. Freedom fighters being equated to terrorists once again...
I use linux, signal and ublock, I listen to political debates, and I'm seldom a freedom fighter.
They are basically saying "if you close the door of the toilets when you poop, you are suspicious".
Part of the snowden documents revealed that anyone who had ever visited the Tor web site, not even downloading the client, was on one of the NSAs "lists"
This "list" thing sounds like FUD when you read articles with a titel like "U.S. Intelligence Has Amassed 'Sensitive and Intimate' Data on 'Nearly Everyone'" https://gizmodo.com/u-s-intelligence-admits-it-hoards-data-o...
Slippery slope?
No, no, we're already down the slope and going fast, we are now at "dissolve informal ecologist organizations and raid their homes and families with antiterrorist groups and gear for the crimes of blocking some construction", "get friendly with neonazi groups and let them parade in Paris, let them attack prides and leftist bars".
> That is a slippery slope.
It's par for the course in a country that bans paternity testing (to "protect the 'unity' of families"! ) [0]
Without the test you'd be none the wiser. Why the need to reduce your relationship to mere contractual obligations. If you raised the child its yours.
As others have mentioned, context matters a lot. The arrested group came back from Syria (where they fought alongside YPG against ISIS) radicalised, and were monitored ever since then. Their alleged crime isn't using Signal, it's just that a French anti-terrorism law allows to be arrested for "organisation with the intent to commit terrorist acts", which the DGSI(internal intelligence services) claims a radicalised group of people calling for a revolution, using encrypted communications, having a bunch of hunting weapons and ammunition, and materials for explosives is. A big stretch on the surface, but they were monitoring them for years, so who the hell knows what else they have.
The real problem is the unlawful detention of one of the men, for which a court finally intervened and he has been freed under surveillance.
> As others have mentioned, context matters a lot.
No, it does not. While this group is indeed suspicious, detaining them without a proof (and using whatsapp as your proof) opens a serious precedent. Now anyone can be detain for that. And it'll be used for serious suspicious cases later but also will be used against someone like you because someone in the police didn't like how you walk.
> opens a serious precedent
Of note for US readers, France legal system is not a jurisprudential system as in the US. That is, a judge's ruling does not become law - i.e must be followed as law by another judge -, only parliament can make law.
The only instance having a form of jurisprudence power is Cour de Cassation, but that's only indirect: being the ultimate instance of recourse CCass rulings for similar cases have high chances of having similar outcomes. They may (or may not) influence other court rulings but a) they are not law and b) reaching to CCass is not guaranteed, so other courts judges are completely free to rule differently (as long as they abide by law)
That said, holistically these precedents matter as they may give broad strokes on mindset trends from the powers at play.
That's interesting. So even if the judge knows their ruling could be the worst of several options, they're boxed into doing so because it's the law?
Isn't that always the case when you have rule of law and separation of powers? The legislative body comes up with the law; judges just apply it.
E.g. if the law says "murder carries a penalty of minimum 5 years and maximum 30 years imprisonment", then a judge cannot give a sentence of 4 year or of 40 years, even if they personally believe this to be a "better" sentence.
My understanding of the US system design is that the law as defined by the legislative body is in a way "minimalistic" (and even more so at the federal level), and jurisprudence augments it with the details.
Taking your example, what constitutes murder and minimum and maximum penalty are defined in "broad strokes", and the judge gets to define "in this specific case that person is guilty in a way where they should be sentenced to X years", and that becomes law (IIUC scoped to their jurisdiction), progressively refining and tuning the whole system, because the next judge faced with a similar enough case would be bound by it. The lawyer game is then to argue whether the current case is close enough to a previous one for the previous ruling to match (and thus tying the judge's hands). A thoughtful US judge would consider both the case at hand and the implications of being law-generating when issuing a ruling.
IANAL but no, the US claim to minimalism is just branding.
The largest jurisdiction like the Federal judiciary, for example, have the Federal Sentencing Guidelines which have a strict point system for criminal sentencing where judges have little discretion due to a Federal “tough on crime” wave.
It really depends on the subfield of law and the vagueness of past legislation.
> My understanding of the US system design is that the law as defined by the legislative body is in a way "minimalistic" (and even more so at the federal level), and jurisprudence augments it with the details.
Which really makes me wonder, how the hell to even professionals keep track of that? For regular stuff you literally can have thousands of relevant cases going back centuries as "precedent" to build on.
There are tools like LexisNexis and FindLaw -- professional search engines to help with finding relevant case law.
Yes. In such cases a reasonable judge ultimately aim to bring justice but can only do so within the confines of law. I recall talking to a few who had to rule in terrible ways (e.g remove a child from one's parent custody because of known but obsolete and largely unrelated past records and granting exclusive rights to the other who was known abusive but had only hearsay to back it up) and took every possible course of action to mitigate and make it less unjust but had their hands tied. They were all experiencing unfathomable psychological distress.
Not really, that description, and the one provided by the user you responded to is a bit disingenuous. Judges have the option of going against prior rulings all the time, and they do it all the time. But it does usually require some context from the judge for why a different ruling was carried out in this instance, because if they’re basically saying the previous judge’s decision was wrong, that calls into question if that prior case actually found real justice. Additionally, only higher courts (not just small local ones) set precedents for their rulings.
What do you mean the worst of several options?
The law is the law, if it's unfair it gets changed.
Having the judge "making it up" as he goes, and then another judge using that sentence 120 years later as precedent like in american courts sounds insane
The law, as it's written down, often fails to match closely the particular circumstances of a specific case. Maybe it never gives an exact match. So judges and juries have to interpret the law. That's the reality, whatever legal system you have.
"Precedent" is a way of saving the time of courts and lawyers, by not having to argue the same details every time they come up. And it's not as if every court judgement becomes a precedent; only higher courts can set precedents, and they can only be overturned by higher courts still.
I think this is a reasonable way of approaching justice.
All of that is easy to contemplate. You have extenuating and aggravating circumstances (things that make the situation worse or better for the defendant)
And on top of that you have a window for sentencing. So if murder is lets say 4-20 years in jail. And you were drunk, that makes it worse, but it was not premeditated, and this and that it all adds up and you might 6 years or you might get 18 depending on the circumstances.
This also allows the law to be rewritten from scratch instead of being based on whatever higher court thought in the 1800s.
> You have extenuating and aggravating circumstances
You do; but that's not actually what I was thinking about. That's just about sentencing, and here (the UK) sentencing doesn't fall within the purview of precedent; there are sentencing guidelines set by senior members of the judiciary.
I was thinking of actual points of law, such as what constitutes unreasonable behaviour, or whether possession of some quantity X of illegal drugs is conclusive evidence of intent to supply.
> whatever higher court thought in the 1800s
It's open to higher courts to overturn precedents, if they've become outdated to the extent they no longer make sense. The very old precedents are presumably precedents that make so much sense that nobody has successfully challenged them. If someone runs into an adverse judgement based on an ancient precedent that is unsupportable, no doubt there's some barrister that would like to make their case (and their reputation) at appeal, by overturning it.
> I was thinking of actual points of law, such as what constitutes unreasonable behaviour, or whether possession of some quantity X of illegal drugs is conclusive evidence of intent to supply.
In Roman judiciary those are usually part of the law as written. So instead of having a law about "unresonable behaviour", you have a law explicitely stating that "making noise above X db at night is illegal" or "drinking in the street is illegal" etc. So the idea of what constitutes intent to supply is based on quantity, anything below X grams is personal use etc.
And you can always add aggravating circumstances that "promote" a crime, so you can have such thing as intent to supply counts having drugs and X amount of money on you, or X amount of drugs and leaflets saying you sell etc. In other words you can explicitely state the kind of things judiciary precedent would probably take into account ahead of time.
> The very old precedents are presumably precedents that make so much sense that nobody has successfully challenged them.
Or the higher courts have not taken a case that challanges them. I am not sure about the UK but in the US, the supreme court pretty much picks their cases which means they can arguably allow for dangerous precedent to stay as long as needed by avoiding cases they know would present a resonable chance of overturning. Or equally dangerous oversee cases that maliciously try to overturn positive precedent.
Also the process is slow, tedious and many times expensive. Going back to Townshed v Townshed, it is a case where a will was overturned because a man freed his slaves and his family said that was proof he was mentally unwell to change his will. This, again, is still being cited when overturning wills or when contesting changes late in life. I cannot possibly imagine a more obviously outdated precedent than a judge thinking freeing slaves means you are insane, and yet...
> In Roman judiciary those are usually part of the law as written.
This is increasingly the case as far as UK criminal law is concerned, I think; also to an increasing extent in matters of marriage and children.
But in family law, there isn't much room for talking about precedent, because for many decades Family Court proceedings have been strictly secret. It's now opening up, slowly.
Contract and property law are rooted in custom, i.e. common law; it seems to me that it would be impossible to write down a contract law that didn't have an infinite number of cracks and corner-cases. Do judiciaries that don't have precedent have to re-litigate all those corner-cases from scratch every time?
What you describe does not match reality.
Townshend v Townshend is a ruling from 1848 still being quoted.
Citing Slavery Project did an analysis and found 18% of all current cases in courts either quote slavery rulings or are less than 2 steps removed (quote a ruling that quotes the slavery ruling).
Not sure how that's relevant.
> The law is the law, if it's unfair it gets changed.
That's the part that doesn't match reality.
> That's the part that doesn't match reality.
I mean Spain recently had a big case related to a group sexual assault. Society was up in arms about the ruling (minimum sentence was 1 year, max was like 6)
So the law was amended and now sexual violence has a maximum sentence of 15 years which is more in line with other european countries.
Judges are not there to come up with the law, only to execute it.
In the USA at least, it's the executive that executes laws. Judges interpret them.
That's not what I asked, nor is it what I implied.
It’s not clear what exactly you were asking or how it relates to the post you were replying to.
Fighting for a foreign nation and/or mercenaries is illegal in itself
Some countries made an exception for Ukraine…
Such as?
It is legal for Americans to fight for another country, unless it's against the US. In fact the US government said they can't intervene if one is forced to do compulsory military service abroad. It gets complicated fast:
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-lega...
> Fighting for a foreign nation and/or mercenaries is illegal in itself
Nope. It depends on countries (and mood of the year).
Some countries allow to become mercenaries and forbid voluntary fighting for a foreign nation. Some countries allow to voluntary fight for a foreign nation and forbid to become mercenaries. And so on.
France even has the French Foreign Legion...
> France even has the French Foreign Legion...
Which is... the complete opposite of fighting for a foreign nation since it's part of the French army. You can allow foreigners in your army while at the same time making it illegal for your own citizen to join foreign mercenaries
How does "police didn't like how you walk" is similar to "demonstrably returned radicalized from a ongoing warzone"?
Because they have not been arrested officially because they returned from a war zone (it’s suspicious but not illegal) but because they used cryptography.
It should be very clear IMHO; they have nothing, if they caught the group with "a bunch of hunting weapons and ammunition" then they can arrest them for that and that'd be a lot more serious ground for the argument of "intent to commit terrorist acts".
Since it seems they don't have anything, they are criminalizing normal tools and dev tools because your average reader/citizen doesn't know the difference between a hacker and a cracker, let alone the right of privacy vs conspiring. The only nice thing IMHO is that everyone uses Whatsapp and no one considers it "criminal", so by bundling Signal etc together with Whatsapp they are making themselves look like they are exaggerating for the average person.
Depending on when it occurred, traveling into Syria could be a crime in itself. France and other EU countries banned the travel to Syria unless you were associated with a limited number of groups(humanitarian, journalism, diplomatic mission etc.). Joining any warring party was explicitly prohibited.
At least in the US it is illegal to stockpile materials for making explosives without explicit licensing.
>context matters a lot
Not in this current context. You can't detain someone willy nilly for 'intentions' without such intentions being explicitly stated as proof in letters, emails, messages, threats etc.
This is authoritarian pandering 101.
>You can't detain someone willy nilly for 'intentions'
AIUI that's lawful in the UK, you can detain people under the terrorism act with only suspicion of intent. It does make some sense, it weighs the level of evidence inversely with the potentially large-scale of awful outcomes. (My understanding hear may be flawed/wrong.)
In order for that not to slip into fascism you need a forthright government that is honourable and believes in the rule of law ... both things the current UK government has proven they do not have.
> This is authoritarian pandering 101.
No, this is matter-of-fact anti-terrorism.
Anti-terrorism and authoritarianism go hand in hand, that's been clear since 9/11.
The problem is that government us terrorism scaremongering to justify erasing citizens rights. It's completely valid to be anti-terrorist and prefer alternative choices to fight it.
For example, in my country, both polices and tribunals are severely under provisioned. I'd start with imroofijg those budgets before passing surveillance laws.
> It's completely valid to be anti-terrorist and prefer alternative choices to fight it.
What alternative choices? France suffered multiple highly deadly attacks on it's soil, including two with 100+ graphic and violent dead. What alternative choices are there to prevent them outside of mass surveillance, infiltrating potentially radicalising religious institutions and shutting them down, arresting members of outwardly radical groups stockpiling weapons and materials for explosives (all things the French government is doing).
I see two comments in and we're already making excuses for authoritarianism. Never have I before seen people go "But mass surveillance, civil right violating arrests are good actually!"
"We gotta auth because there are no alternatives" has been used time and again in history to commit atrocities.
---
Like it or not, People don't just go around committing terrorist attacks everyday. I, for example, and many people I know, have plenty of equipment to do so if I wanted to (multiple firearms, potential explosives etc), but why would I?
How do you stop actual terrorist groups from committing actual terrorist attacks, the like of which france has seen recently, without being "authoritarian"? A terrorist is almost always a normal person. They likely will not have committed a crime until they do the terrorism.
Like, this is paradox of tolerance stuff. How do you prevent bad actors from taking advantage of your permissiveness and liberal laws? I'm not saying france is in the right to detain someone for using a simple app, because they aren't, but that this action is on a spectrum, and everyone from governments to your local forum admin is desperately trying to find the right point on that spectrum. So what do you suggest?
If your answer is "don't try to stop the terrorists", then you should understand that human society really hates random violence that isn't "normal", so unless you have some way to make innocents dying for no reason "normal", people will give up any freedom to fix that. Maslow's hierarchy of needs isn't good science but people's desire for "safety" is a very very strong desire.
there is an inherent social contract w.r.t. freedom and the societal notion of collective liberty -- freedom provides agency to both good and bad actors.
a free society implicitly accepts this as a risk-reward in order to maximize freedom, therefore a social contract.
and the social contract boils down to a government's obligation to secure its citizens (dependent on the boundaries of the implied social contract and what its participants agree to), and whether or not the balance between security and freedom is agreeable for parties involved.
constantly advocating for more security, at all costs, in order to stop "the bad guy", and then presenting a straw man to rhetorically justify it by asking: how else do we stop the bad guys, is authoritarian, anti-freedom, and patronizing.
freedom has an inherent risk of, well, freedom.
law was a construct designed for accountability, not deterrence, nor prevention because its [modern] philosophical (post french revolution) motivation is centered around optimizing for freedom (ie: political liberalism) and recognizing that actors will act -- it just attempts to add the checks and balance idea which attempts to ensure (that is, uphold a social contract), that bad actors are held accountable for their (free) actions.
you'll never be able to magically "legislate" away bad actors, but you can certainly attempt to "control" them, which presents a very, very large slippery slope of positive and negative definitions, and nuances around objective suspicion and other faculties used for discernment w.r.t. bad actors -- all of which directly violate the philosophical (US) notion of innocence until proven guilty, and very much so move away from any kind of scale where freedom is (attempted to be) balanced.
if you want freedom, you can't just erode the social norms built on foundations of trust, agency, and liberty in order to prevent bad actors from acting freely -- what you're calling for is not a free society by definition, because it seeks to mitigate and or prevent agency before it happens (reminds me of Minorty Report), which is restrictive and anti-thetical to freedom.
freedom comes at a price. freedom is (not) slavery, and i have no interest in participating in a social contract that binds me to chains through freedom risk-averse framings of governance.
> freed under surveillance
One of many problems with western societies at the moment is the idea that we can be free while under surveillance.
> they were monitoring them for years, so who the hell knows what else they have
Given the weakness of the elements assembled, why would the DGSI decide to withhold any decisive proof from the eyes of the justice system?
Situation in France will not end well.
Both rule of law and liberal democracy are increasingly damaged. Our institutions are so weak that we are one election away from a complete disaster.
Our constitution always concentrated a lot of power in the hand of the president but there is no effective counter-power left. The government set multiple precedent that violate freedom of assembly and association and parliamentary rights. I skipped a lot of authoritarian practice that happened and are still happening but the situation is egregiously bad
I don't say that because I am a political opponent. I voted for this government in 2017, I am a founder, I am pro business. But also I am a father of two and I would rather raise my children in a democracy.
I am seriously pessimistic about this situation. EU knows and complains about Poland & Hungary but France is going to be a shitshow of a far worse magnitude. We should NOT get a pass because Macron knows how to play the game
As you can see from other replies: - the French people did not care that they had to sign a paper to get out to walk - that we closed libraries and forbade people from buying clothes in supermarkets - that Macron has been in charge of the country's finances for over a decade with horrid results (+600B€ in debt) - that Macron did everything he said he would not, and said a lot of things that would be treason in a reasonable civilization
We are the rooster that sings with it's feet deep in shite. It's gonna get ugly when it hits the fan.
"the French people did not care that they had to sign a paper to get out to walk"
1- Don't you think this is quite political? Like what is your benefit from saying this out of context? If signing this paper and being stricter helped the hospitals not being saturated and saved x thousands lives do you still think it was a bad thing? (I'm not even saying that's the case I'm just saying you don't seem to take that possibility into account at all)
2- From my observations French people -constently- complain about this. So I wouldn't say they didn't care about it. You're doing it right now.
> Don't you think this is quite political?
We’re discussing politics.
> Like what is your benefit from saying this out of context?
What does that even mean? Are you insinuating they’re being paid to say that? How do we know you’re not paid to counter them?
> If signing this paper and being stricter helped the hospitals not being saturated and saved x thousands lives do you still think it was a bad thing?
The problem is you and no one else could prove now or then that giving up my human rights would save lives. Because its all pointless lip service to take power away from the people under the guise of “protection”. Just like with encryption, personal weapons, and everything else that governments don’t want us to have.
> I'm just saying you don't seem to take that possibility into account at all
And I’m saying you haven’t taken into account that you’re an Authoritarian apologist.
>> If signing this paper and being stricter helped the hospitals not being saturated and saved x thousands lives do you still think it was a bad thing?
If banning encryption and helping police stop terrorism saved x thousand lives do you blah blah blah blah
Do programmers hang out here? The aversion to reasoning from first principle is palpable.
> If signing this paper and being stricter helped the hospitals not being saturated and saved x thousands lives do you still think it was a bad thing?
If patriot act helped US intelligence agencies prevent the next 9/11, do you still think it was a bad thing?
It certainly is political in some ways. Some people think that government shouldn't have such authority to lock people down in their homes for months on end, to spend public money on buying overpriced masks and preventive treatment that doesn't work, shouldn't pay the media to spread misinformation and definitely shouldn't have access into our lives like we're in some dystopian novel from the last century. But hey, maybe that's not most people anyway...
France's Debt-to-GDP[0] went up about 17 points during the first year of covid, compared to Canada's 20 points. In the following years it's gone down about 3 points, which is about the same for Canada. I don't really know who else to compare France to, since Germany, UK, and USA all have their own weird complications and Italy was hit early by covid in a way that most countries were not.
No matter who was in charge of France there was going to be a giant spike in debt during at the very least covid, and now dealing with this Ukraine mess.
[0] I greatly prefer net Debt-to-GDP, which is a closer approximation to a country's actual balance sheet, as a measure, but it isn't frequently reported and most people tend not to care.
Hold your horses... First of all not all french citizens think or act the same way, and as for the rest Macron is not the first president (and certainly not the last) to screw up.
I'm convinced that whatever president they elect, they'll complain just as much.
> EU knows and complains about Poland & Hungary but France is going to be a shitshow of a far worse magnitude.
I am French too and this sounds greatly exaggerated. Either you don't really know about the situation in Hungary or you have a very twisted view of what's happening in France (maybe induced by the medias). You should take a step back.
There is definitely a tendency to authoritarianism and confusionism from the current government, directed at political opposition.
"Security" laws extending the powers of the police and creating new ways to criminalize protest have been passed at a constant rhythm over the years since Sarkozy's time. After the state of urgency of 2015, part of the dispositions where simply put into law permanently.
Police has been increasingly violent during protests, bringing back old forbidden tactics and squads formerly dissolved for their violence (voltigeurs).
While there has been no dissolution of leftist movement and no political violence from the left since "action directe" in the 80's, there have been multiple ones (or attempts) in recent times, like the one from yesterday of an ecological movement.
Anti-terrorist laws are used to detain ecologists or protesters indefinitely, like in the case of the "8th november" affair from this topic, which has seen a person kept in solitary (hence, tortured) for 16 months without even being convicted.
What I say is that IF France becomes an illiberal democracy, it is going to be far worse for EU than what happened in Hungary. Hungary and France are absolutely not on the same scale
Wait for the next election in Germany. AfD has just climbed to the 2nd place with 20% of support and is still growing. Believe or not, one day you will miss someone like Orban.
Germany power is less centralized, with more powerful counter-power than Hungary , reducing the risk of seeing an Orban like situation.
Germany tends to have 1.34 liberal-ish governments followed by sixteen years of conservatives.
Well, in the last election the greens were projected to get the most votes. Didn't happen. Not to say that the AfDs popularity isn't worrisome, it is, but votes are counted on election days.
And of course the response from the other parties is to see if they can ban the AfD instead of realizing that this is their own doing by continously ignoring the interest of the voters who are then easily swayed by a populist party (or just voting AfD because none of the other options are good either).
> Believe or not, one day you will miss someone like Orban.
I think you're sugarcoating the statement. Any type of authoritarianism is bad, would you mind elaborating why AfD would be worse than what Orban or Duda or even Erdogan are doing to their countries?
I can only assume because it’s not “their” kind of authority taking power.
The situation is a bit less dire than that thankfully.
2/3rds of AfD supporters claim to be doing it as a protest vote. And that they don't support the AfD. Just like with brexit.
There's still time for an alternative before all of Europe goes in with fascism again.
> There's still time for an alternative
That is somewhat funny/punny, since that is (as you're probably aware) literally in AfD's name: Alternative for Germany (Deutschland).
You would think that with that pun I wouldn't get downvoted. Ah well :)
> 2/3rds of AfD supporters claim to be doing it as a protest vote.
You don't vote for proto fascists as a protest vote. Especially not when you're German.
Well, you do, but not if you don't already find their views palatable.
There is a large undercurrent of reactionary hateful views in German politics that usually hides behind the fig leaf of "conservatism" but has become more visible thanks to parties like CSU openly copying AfD talking points and "liberal" media being unequipped to handle them in any other way than giving them a platform and hoping that the "marketplace of ideas" saves the day. Of course as we now know from experience, "rational debate" is impotent in a "post-truth" environment.
It's a widespread misconception that Germany got rid of all the Nazis and Nazi ideology during the so-called "Denazification" (Entnazifizierung).
While there were formal reviews of the innumerable former NSDAP members to determine their ideology and behavior under Nazi rule, only the most blatant offenders faced any consequences and it was demonstrably easy to "cheat" (i.e. we now know based on a better understanding of historical records that some people were able to hide very incriminating evidence of their involvement in e.g. forced labor and Jewish persecution) and any undesirable rulings could be appealed to offer another opportunity to "correct the record" so to say. As a consequence, many Nazis saw no real consequences and even ended up in the same positions of power because their job experience made them the most qualified (and "innocent until proven guilty", right?).
Additionally, many former NSDAP members went on to continue working in politics. Of the parties still relevant today, the conservative CDU/CSU received the lions share of them, in addition to those formerly associated with the likewise Christian "center party" which while ostensibly "politically moderate" was one of the driving forces in the rise of the NSDAP and the passing of the Enabling Act dissolving the democracy.
In East Germany, likewise many former NSDAP members ended up in the equivalent of the CDU/CSU (known as CDU in East Germany at the time and CDUD or Ost-CDU in West Germany), the NDPD and the LDPD (the East Germany equivalents of the market liberal West German FDP, the NDPD explicitly being created to target "unimpacted" ex-NSDAP members and siphon off conservative voters who would otherwise have supported the CDU or LPDP), all of which continued to exist as an executive organ[1] of the ruling unity party until 1989.
It's also worth pointing out the East Germany was even less rigurous in its "Denazification" (Stalin ended the program in 1948 insisting that it was time to stop distinguishing between ex-NSDAP and non-NSDAP and instead focus on growing democracy) and the SED was uniquely ill-equipped to deal with neo-Nazis when they arose, previously already having viewed "unimpacted" NSDAP members as politically confused rather than genuinely dangerous. For some it was literally impossible to imagine neo-Nazis could exist in East Germany because they saw the rise of the Nazis as a response to capitalism and East Germany was supposed to be non-capitalist[2]. For this reason, East Germany was however (like the USSR) quite successful at fighting other leftist currents, which were seen as misguided or even "capitalist" (as the only valid form of anti-capitalism was clearly that practiced by the government and opposing it therefore must be capitalist).
So in essence Germany has never weaned itself off fascism, really. While Germany has become generally more progressive compared to the 1930s, in some ways it is also still less progressive than it was during the Weimar era. A lot of leftist politics also died even before the suppression under the Nazis, the suppression under the SED or the suppression under the Cold War era anti-communist West Germany: while many know about the in-fighting between the SPD and the USPD after WW1, culminating in a massacre at the hands of monarchist paramilitaries, there were also numerous other leftist mass deaths such as the two(!) socialist republics in Bavaria, which eventually also fell victim to the monarchists.
In other words, it shouldn't be surprising that we still have monarchist terrorist groups (Reichsbürger) treated with more bewilderment than horror, whereas the closest we have to leftist activism is moderates gluing themselves to public roads to demand incremental climate protection legislation, and two so-called leftist parties that hate each others guts and one of which has almost fully embraced neoliberalism (the SPD implemented the neoliberal reforms of weakening labor protections, social welfare and medical care some 20 years ago).
The AfD is a protest vote in as much as Trump is a protest vote. They're not something you usually bring up in polite conversation but they have easy answers and push all the right (wing) faux-populist buttons.
[1]: Point of pedantry: East Germany quickly established a system with a single ruling party, the SED or "socialist unity party". However the CDU, NDPD and LDPD continued to exist as "block parties" and began increasingly aligning themselves with the ruling SED. The "block parties" were infamously nepotistic and provided a relatively easy path to political power and privileges compared to the dominant SED.
[2]: Point of pedantry: East Germany was not "communist" although it was at times framed as "Stalinist". East Germany instead eventually used the label "real existing socialism" (along with some other Eastern block countries) which was intended to frame anyone left of the ruling party as "utopian" and unserious. This "it's already as good as it gets" position is distinct from other so-called "communist" countries which often used the term aspirationally, claiming they would eventually achieve the communist ideal after reaching a tipping point (allowing the state to "wither away"). Both are distinct from anarcho-communists who would argue that if you try to build a state to achieve communism, "real existing socialism" really is the best you can hope for because states don't wither away voluntarily and you can only grow communism from the ground up (cf. prefigurativism).
Factually correct as far as I can tell. Painful though. I've met some Germans of 'a certain age' in the 80's and none of them ever owned up to what they were up to during the war. Also a good number of them claimed to be Swiss but turned out to be Germans after all. Lots of whitewashing there.
Police and justice in particular were largely unscathed by "denazification". People like the fervent nazi anti-semite Willi Geiger, who was among other things a Special Prosecutor at a Special Nazi Court (with a death toll, having personally pressed and seen to the public execution of an 18yo suspected gay among other people), went on to preside at the supreme court and later became the longest serving federal constitutional judge of germany and also leaked all court internals to the adenauer government, are just the tip of a very brown ice berg.
> 2/3rds of AfD supporters claim to be doing it as a protest vote. And that they don't support the AfD. Just like with brexit.
> There's still time for an alternative before all of Europe goes in with fascism again.
AfD => fascism. Argumentum ad Hitlerum basically. Does Germany really need more migration? More identity kamikaze? More publicly financed propaganda (ARD, ZDF, DW, plenty "N"GOs)? More provocation towards Russia for no god damn reason? More climate hysteria (and the unevitable destruction of enviroment for it)?
Which party would you choose instead? They all stand for the same thing with different velocity except ... yeah, exactly.
The AfD may not be literally a fascist party, but it does have a prominent right-wing extremist faction that includes several of its most widely known members such as this man: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B6rn_H%C3%B6cke
I think arguing about the accuracy of labels like "nazi" or "fascist" is a bit beside the point. You and I both know the people calling the AfD fascist or nazi won't suddenly like it better if you can convince them they don't meet the exact definition of fascism or are identical to the historical National Socialist Democratic Workers Party. It's clearly more about a vibe, but that is also true for the AfD's own political ideology (and yours, apparently, if you think "identity kamikaze" is 1) a thing that is happening and 2) something to be seriously concerned about). Incidentally the NSDAP also had different factions including Strasserites, who imagined a more proletarian-led economy and people who thought having homosexuals like Röhm around was acceptable, at least for utilitarian purposes. Incidentally, most of those were murdered by the rest once the NSDAP actually got into power. Such is the reward for being progressive in the far-right.
Protest votes. What would one expect if the Green party is suddenly a warmongering party and Scholz is silent about Nord Stream even after the Washington Post essentially blames Ukraine?
Also, while I don't like the people in the AfD, they are still mostly the former right wing of the CDU/CSU, which is not comparable to Orban. CDU/CSU can blame itself for mismanagement.
The Greens suddenly supported war? The first deployment of German armed forces since WW2 happened under a SPD/Green government, over 20 years ago.
Gp made points, how do you see them as twisted and exaggerated?
"Either you don't really know about the situation in France or you have a very twisted view of what's happening in Hungary /Poland (maybe induced by the medias). You should take a step back"
Classic French answer confusing the fairly good situation in the country for a disaster.
France has been for the past sixty years and remains an extremely technocratic country. Counter-powers are still everywhere in the administration. The judiciary system is fully independent and works well. The balance between the parliament and the executive is extremely in favour of the president (which is still elected every five years during free elections) but counter-powers exist. They can’t be used by the opposition because despite spending all their time crying wolf and explaining this is the end of the world, they remain a minority and have nothing to propose anyway.
The issue in France remains the same it has always been. The population is old, largely apathetic and would much rather be on the dole than produce anything of value. Meanwhile the unions are extremely unrepresentative of the population as a whole and remain stuck in the Trotskyist heydays of the past.
Oh yeah everyone must work harder, for some reason we have more technology than ever before and more people than ever before, but we all must work harder.
There's enough food and energy if we so choose but no; artificial crisis from coughs to barbarian hordes on the horizon mean you must be poorer and work harder.
We could all just actually wake up and realise they are lying they are always lying. They dare not tell the truth for you'd realise how much they lie when truth would shine so bright.
You are confused. The issue is not about working harder. The issue is with producing value.
I have yet to met a protester who can explain to me how burning cars and picketing is going to magically move down the median age of the population which is slowly but surely drifting towards 50. Considering most French also don’t want to rely on immigration (not that the country is attractive anyway), I guess they are either planning to force people to make kids at gunpoint or are strongly in denial.
Don’t hesitate to explain who is this mysterious "they" who are apparently responsible of everything wrong in the country.
They are the people of power, the psychotics and narcissists. It's not that hard to see.
I've existed here long enough to see those that claw themselves to the top, and they are nearly all without fail a combination of psychopaths and narcissists and they will conspire to increase their power and self obsession. I'm very sure you've bumped into them at some point in your life.
The problem is that most of the people are weak and passive and they can not compete against this "they", the majority don't have the will to do it individually and our collective will is either captured by the "they" or kept divided.
France kinda has a history of things going bad, their rulers overreaching, and people then taking matters into their own heads,...
I somehow hope this time it can end less violently, but with how much (a lot of french) people hate macron, you never know...
The larger problem is, that it is spreading to other countries and EU itself (just think of how many times EU tried to stop/backdoor/outlaw encryption). Add a new upcoming crisis, recession in germany and the long-term problems brought with eu expansion, and things are about to get even worse.
Frenchman, pro business too. Completely share your analysis. This is slowly turning into a shit démocrature.
Short debate on the same topic on french TV:
This sounds like the normal mode for french politics. How many times has your government collapsed over the last 200 years? You're on the 5th republic or something right?
Better to have governments collapse than allow society to collapse.
I can't claim to be an expert in French politics, but harmful government should not be allowed to be stable.
To be fair, a bunch of these happened because of wars, we didn't really control these ones.
The other bunch happened because they were precariously unstable governments.
Yep and compared to European history this is tame.
I am not French but my opinion of the current government is at rock bottom after how Macron recently went to China to basically suck up to Xi Jinping, completely ignoring human rights violations and all. And for what?
Oh it's not just Xi. He likes dictators and human rights abusers, even those that no one will touch with a ten foot pole. Most recently, he received Mohammed bin Salman at the Élysée.
You criticise Macron for visiting a „dictator“ but not for being dictator himself?
Macrons pushing of retirement law change against both public and parliament is definitely not democratic.
as not French I'm not very aware of his internal policies in France, but the news of that visit got to me. In my eyes it concerns EU and the world too
I think maybe because the rest of the world sees those changes he pushed through as incredibly mild
he increased the pension age because people are getting older and the state will not be able to afford it? wow what a crazy dictator
Other variables could have been adjusted (pensions, contributions...). Independent studies showed that our retirement system is very much affordable for our government and will still be 50 years from now. Just today it's also been revealed that the government's plan overestimated its savings by 4B euros...
Are you just repeating a common cliche while not knowing much about the situation?
So yes, unilaterally deciding to raise the retirement age, which doesn't actually fix anything, without having a vote, without listening to the protests, is neither mild nor democratic.
He used emergency powers to pass the law because he knew such law would hardly survive the regular legisative process. It might not be a Putin-style dictatorships but its definitively heading in the wrong direction.
And thats without mentionning the use of abuse of administration prohibitions towards anti-racist associations and environmental groups.
Probably did it because the EU needs this for political acceptance. It should have been made clear to people, that any form of social security system will need to be harmonized. I guess this was just the first step to increase pension age and in general it will always converge on the lowest common denominator for normal workers.
How would it ever pass normal legislative process? If I tell you that you have spend two more years working and there's no benefit for you at all, would you vote for it?
Through parliement. Thats just how a normal democracy works. Or through a referendum.
unless we are talking about handling a national crisis, or avoiding a US-style shutdown, then avoiding a vote may be legitimate under specific circumstances.
but I doubt pension reforms fall under national emergencies
I agree it should not fall under national emergencies, but I don't see any other way it would pass. Nobody wants to work longer for no gain. The pension system in a lot of countries is basically a ponzi scheme.
I think the situation in France is quite similar to other EU countries, even the formerly holy nordic ones.
> [...] l’utilisation de messageries chiffrées grand public, sont instrumentalisées comme autant de « preuves » d’une soi-disant « clandestinité » qui ne peut s’expliquer que par l’existence d’un projet terroriste.
Sure, using encryption must mean I have terroistic ambitions... they say public officials lack creativity, but... but at least the government got convicted for their attempts at prosecution. Means the justice system is still functioning.
I'm from Brazil and I'd say we've just had that disaster election you fear a few years ago.
I used to laugh at the absurdities of the Trump government thinking it would never happen here and alas, it did. And it was even worse than most could have ever imagined.
Don't get me wrong, I didn't like the previous government and already dislike the current one's direction, but when you take one person that truly doesn't give a f**, they can ruin a country in ways you didn't even know existed.
But I don't really see a way out though. Most politicians here (probably everywhere if we're honest) are corrupt so you always choose between the lesser of many evils. The obvious solution is to actually use our collective power to rebel and really enact change - something ironically we say the French are good at - but it simply never happens. Looking at the French protests against the rise of retirement age gave me hope. But then you look at the outcome and it's always the same: we lose.
I honestly think the system has won. Capitalism successfully made everyone (myself included) just comfortable enough to not really take action. We are the proverbial frogs in boiling water and slowly but surely normalizing this insane world we live in today giving away all our hard-fought rights to our capitalist overlords.
We get upset and yell at the void, Twitter, HN, blog posts and don't actually DO anything. I truly hate myself for that. Meanwhile those that actually do something, have their efforts stifled away by governments with ease.
Perhaps I am a bit too pessimistic about this, but from where I stand, there's no way out.
> but from where I stand, there's no way out.
I know how you feel!
I'm from the UK. Corbyn's Labour seemed to me to be a glimmer of hope; but he was pushed out by the MSM and a cabal of his own party's rightist officials, and replaced by a man who immediately on getting the leadership, repudiated all his manifesto promises.
So I no longer have anyone to vote for, and I favour revolution.
First they came for the Gilets Jaunes...
I know that that particular reply of mine doesn't help your particular case, but it was sickening to see how much of the supposed French people's liberties and citizens rights were broken back then and how most of the French intelligentsia was just cheering the government from the side.
> First they came for the Gilets Jaunes...
Actually, they came too late for the Gilets Jaunes!
> it was sickening to see how much of the supposed French people's liberties and citizens rights were broken back then
I agree with you, a bunch of idiots holding a whole country hostage was not at all what one would expect in a sane democracy.
Pif, your messages here align mostly with authoritarianism and fascism. You don't seem to care about people their freedom, their rights or real democracy. It's not a minority that holds the country hostage it's a minority who have the balls to standup against a small elite who have all power. Having to pick out of two evils has nothing to do with democracy.
> our messages here align mostly with authoritarianism and fascism
If you want to call "authoritarianism" the basic rule of law (as in: do not block traffic, do not prevent shops from opening, do not prevent public offices from offering their services...) you are welcome.
By the way, a pet peeve of mine, having always voted for the centre-left, I never appreciated how authoritarianism is generally considered an expression of the extreme right, while history shows that dictatorship was the evil of both extremes.
> You don't seem to care about people their freedom
I do care about the freedom of all people, and that is why I detest when protesters use violence (which is wrong) in order to gather attention for their point (which may be right).
> minority who have the balls to standup against a small elite who have all power.
I respect your opinion, even if I don't share it.
So, how does that mesh with the BLM protests that took place across the US?
Here we have "fiery but peaceful protests" but in France it is a fundamental breakdown of the rule of law?
That's the spirit of "he has promised us that he'll let us enjoy our assignats in peace and bring order to the country by ending the revolution", i.e. the spirit that helped Napoleon got hold of power. I think trying to end the revolution is still an ongoing thing in today's France, for better or for worse.
> trying to end the revolution is still an ongoing thing in
I don't agree. France is as wonderful as it is because revolution was successfully completed long ago.
I think we should not go over the top.
The case reported in this article started when French people who went to fight in Syria among Kurdish militants came back to France and were put under surveillance.
Even if the prosecution is using unconvincing evidence, which I don't know, this is hardly a sign of impending doom.
I live in France as well, and personally do not feel the same negativity as you.
What I don't appreciate at all is our share of idiots that think that blocking the country is a proper way of protesting (see "gilets jaunes"). That is not democratic, when a minority imposes their will to the silent majority.
I'm always appalled by comments like these that justify their sympathy for authoritarian practices simply because they align with their interests. I'm in Paris, France, and police brutality has been increasing hand in hand with the corrupt nature of our government over the last decade, and it's horrifying. The apple is completely rotten; the way our election system works and all the dirty tricks you can do when you're in power mean people are not left with any other choice but to revolt. This does not bode well for our country.
> sympathy for authoritarian practices simply because they align with their interests
Nothing personal, I'm talking about the interests of all the voters who freely elected the current president and parliament.
If you are not happy, it's our duty as a society to provide you a way to express your point. But the right to express your point does not involve the violence to get our attention. Most people just want to go on with their daily life, and putting obstacles to them will not gather any sympathy around you.
Polls showed that a large majority of French supported the Gilets Jaunes or supported the recent strikes. Foolowing your reasonning, the minority imposing their will to the silent majority is the government.
Furthermore, independently to our opinion about the Gilets Jaunes, the way this government use the police on the protest can be questioning for a democracy. Even the journalist of the right Figaro newspaper protested several times against police brutality against journalists.
Furthermore, independently to our opinion about the recent strikes (supported by 100% of the democratically elected trade unions), the fact that the government twisted the constitution to avoid a democratic vote of the democratically elected parliament on the legislative text is "puzzling"
https://www.statista.com/statistics/945415/gilets-jaunes-app...
Those in favour went from 70 to 50% over the course of 5 months, opposition tripled, strong support went from 50% to 20%.
Few months after the start of the Gilet Jaune, they were not "blocking the country" anymore (I was answering a comment about this)...
And while not supporting the Gilet Jaune mode of action anymore, people still strongly supported and support the main ideas they pushed, like Citizens' initiative referendum, or the Solidarity tax on wealth
> while not supporting the Gilet Jaune mode of action anymore, people still strongly supported and support the main ideas they pushed
Imagine how successful they could have been if they had behaved as civilised people from the beginning! I personally like some of those ideas, but I'll never trust people who think that violence is justifiable.
I don't understand this point, and it's one we see very often. What would have happened if they'd been civilised?
1. We had a convention citoyenne pour le climat. Macron then mostly ignored it.
2. We have elected representatives who can vote on the laws for us. Macron then used article 49.3 to mostly ignore them.
3. Vote? For which candidate? None of them would cover all of the GJs' demands.
If you disqualify protests as a valid form of democratic expression, you also disqualify our famous revolution, the feminist protests that earned women the right to vote, the union strikes that earned us many worker rights, etc.
> I'll never trust people who think that violence is justifiable
Ah, that explains it. You only see violence in protesters who break windows, not in governments who enact laws on their people. Am I correct in assuming that you're ok with making people work 20 hours/week for the RSA as well?
> 1. We had a convention citoyenne pour le climat. Macron then mostly ignored it.
The reality is: talking about CO2 emissions is talking about economy. That is the main job of the government.
> 2. We have elected representatives who can vote on the laws for us. Macron then used article 49.3 to mostly ignore them.
Macron did not ignore them. 49.3 means: "I'm ready to go on this point; are you ready, too?". And, by the way, you do remember that Macron was elected, too, do you?
> 3. Vote? For which candidate? None of them would cover all of the GJs' demands.
So what? This is democracy! If you can't, or don't want to, found your political movement, then you have to choose among the available candidates. Do you think Macron's program matched exactly my desires?
The revolution, the feminism and the union strikes were expressions of people who were oppressed and on the receiving side of violence. Gilets Jaunes was none of this.
So basically your are saying that:
- peaceful protest or "convention citoyenne" are not and should not be efficient
- We don't care what the vast majority of people want, and we don't care about the parliament.
- The only thing we should care is what think the President. The one who got the support of barely 20% of the French population on the first round, and them got elected on the second round because people voted against the far right... In a "presidential Monarchy"
What a nice conception of "democracy"
> You only see violence in protesters who break windows, not in governments who enact laws on their people.
A government trying to manage a country has a ton of compromises to make every day; I do not expect to be happy with every one of their choices, but I think the current government is doing OK.
On the other side, I fail to see how breaking a window can solve the problem of the protester.
> If you disqualify protests as a valid form of democratic expression
I'm afraid you confuse protest with violence. The ability to protest is fundamental for a democracy to stay a democracy, but protest must not imply violence and, especially, expressing your point does not make it automatically right.
So when your grandma wait hours in her shit and piss in a corridor of an hospital because their are not enough bed and enough nurses, and then suffer bad after effects because of this waiting time, this is not some sort of violence according to you ?
When even journalists from le Figaro (right wing newspaper) have to protest brutality against journalists.... the violence is only coming from the protester ?
Seriously ?
In France the only way firefighter got heard the last few times, after month of peaceful protestation, is by doing violent protest, including throwing heavy thing on the policeman. Then the government accepted to negociate with them. If you don't use violence in France, in many case you don't get heard at all.
Gilets Jaunes, aslo because of their violence did manage to get the government to made some concession.
Millions of French people (more than Gilets Jaunes at their peak) marched several times peacefully against the recent Pension Law, supported by all the trade union democratically elected, supported by more than 70% of the population and more than 90% of the workers. Nothing happen. No concession. Not even a vote in the parliament.
For sure sometimes violence is efficient, sometimes violence in counter-productive. Justifiable ? that is something else...
To be fair, wealth taxes are a pretty unworkable idea in the large.
Used to work just find in France before Macron
> Polls showed that
The only polls that matter are elections. Apart from elections, people have the right to avoid any poll without risking any policy change.
Elections are not, and should not, be the be-all end-all of a functionning democraty. Otherwise you just have an elective aristocracy.
And to be clear, I'm not saying pure polling driven policy is the solution, but saying politician should outright ignore them because not legally binding is a very weird stance.
If anything, the origin of the 5th republic under its founding president used referendums to validate the president's actions. He literally resigned after losing a referendum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_de_Gaulle#Retirement.
1) I was responding to someone talking about silent majority... polls is then relevant
2) Democracy is not just voting every 5 year for a president and a parliament
What gilets jaunes or blocking whatever have anything to do with violating parliamentary rights ? Or making protests of disappointment (edit: disapproval) illegal everywhere the president go ?
What can anyone do about a president that abuses its power ? This is a basic democratic issue and I am pessimistic because a lot of people like you just don't seem to get it, so we won't address that and when it is going to be too late it will be too late.
You might like or trust the current government but what about the next one ?
> making protests of disappointment illegal everywhere the president go
France is big enough. Having to avoid a few square kilometres around the president will leave you plenty of space to organize your protest.
You mean like "free speech zones" - which seems to be defined as zones in the US where you do have freedom of speech. (Yes, I'm wondering "what about the rest of the land area" as well.)
Next law: protest as much as you want but out of sight. In your own cellar maybe? Ok that was sarcasm, but the very point of a protest is to be visible. Same with all Last Generation or such protests: if they had simply marched on some side street, nobody would talk about them today.
> the very point of a protest is to be visible.
And that's why the public space must be made available for protesters, it's part of the life of a sane democracy. Public space and free press are sufficient if you have a point that matters to other people.
But if you feel the need to hijack another event in order to get people's attention, maybe you don't have a valid point to start with?
I would argue the conclusion to that isn't that they don't have a valid point, but that the people cannot be sufficiently motivated, or that they are unsure how to protest effectively, or that they are unaware that disrupting often leaves people feeling disrupted, that feeling disrupted is not a positive feeling, and that associating Negativity with a movement too many times can really hurt it in the long run. Just look at the cultures idea of PETA in the USA.
I argue that PETA succeeded to bring into the official discussion other, more moderate organizations, thus effectively moving "the cause" forward at the expense of their own organization. Probably that was not their goal, but from a 10.000 feet it looks like achieving that. I think the same goes with the "eco terrorists", they may get slaughtered in the process but ecology gets on everybody's tongues. Again not sure they are planning it like this or it's just a side effect.
When they came for the protesters you did not speak out because you was not a protester... Beware when they come for you there will be no one left to speak out. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_)
When they came for violent people preventing other pacific people to move on with their life, nobody needed to speak because their actions were against the law.
Will you be celebrating the 14th of July buddy? Or will you be condemning the act of 633 angry French citizens "storming the Bastille in Paris, capturing its munitions, releasing its seven prisoners, lynching the governor and demolishing the fortress".
After all, they broke the law and since it's the law then clearly the government had full legitimacy... right?
Next, you should be defending the "Code Noir" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_Noir That was also the law at some point and only affecting a minitority of the population. The suffering of anyone in society shouldn't interrupt your daily life as any act of revolt is illegal and therefore illegitimate.
Are you even French? "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite" unless it inconveniences my day-to-day.
Your examples do not involve people living in a democracy with universal right to vote.
And your definition of democracy is nothing more than electing a master to rule over you for 5 years. As long as his actions are legal, you consider them legitimate despite being highly unpopular and imposed on people through police violence.
There is more to democracy than a vote every 5 years.
Consent of the governed: "Government's legitimacy and moral right to use state power is justified and lawful only when consented to by the people or society over which that political power is exercised."
The founders of the United States believed that the government of Great Britain should rest on the principle that government depended on the consent of the governed and that any government not based on that consent could be justifiably overthrown and replaced.
Pretty sure revolutionary France abides by the same principles.
Or defending the flattening of protesters who were occupying Tiananmen square...
I hope they come for the clichés and razors first...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
What every programmer should know about "First they came" :-)
Deserves repeating. I learned of this poem first last month, seems relevant.
very very well said
Come on, this is so exaggerated.
If you care about democracy, you have much more relevant menace in France. People are screaming about Macron for some reason. Because they were told he is a DiCtAtOr!! Because he didn’t fold to unions. Apparently unions are to be obeyed otherwise you are a dictator? While obeying to elected government is dictatorship? It’s a nice inversion.
The true authoritarian menace in France comes from the far right and far left. Melenchon is in love with authoritarian leaders (see bolivarian alliance), he can’t help screaming at people that disagree with him. His political career should have been ended by just a few of his outbursts. But he gets a pass for some reason. And don’t get me started on the far right, screaming that we are in a dictatorship while admiring Putin…
Of course you can criticize Macron, he’s far from perfect, but if you care about democracy, focusing on him being THE issue is outright ridiculous. We have far more serious threats. You are completely missing the big picture. And people being told to fight Macron instead of the extremes is a serious threat. I can’t believe I have to explain that.
Well, democracy is not 0 or 1, there are shades... So for sure Macron is not a dictator, but French democracy "grade" was not super high and it did went down.
French 5th republic is sometimes nicknamed "presidential monarchy"... Electing the parliament quite at the same time as the president did reinforced the power of the president. The rise of the far right basically made that the one in the best position against far right at the first round of presidential election (with less than 20% of French people voting for him) be sure of being a Presidential Monarch for 5 years. (Notes that the leftist like Melanchon support a new constitution with more democracy, more counter power, less power for the president...)
Note also that in France people working do democratically vote for unions (even if you are not unionized), and quite 100% of those votes went to union that are strongly against las Pension Law. According to polls more than 90% of the workers were against this law. And Macron could not pass this law in the elected parliament, and had to twist the constitution to pass it... This can be seen as problematic for many.
When it come to protest, a lot of NGO and international bodies criticized the way France handle it. Many people are afraid to prostest in France now. Even the journalist of the righ wing newspaper le Figaro protest several time against police brutality against journalist in protest. NOte that France is the only country in EUrope to use many kind of weapon against protestors, weapon that can kill .
When it comes to journalists. Aside of being target by police during the protest, we've seen also a growing Judicial pressure against them. And now the government is talking about law where they could be spied...
"Because" of terrorism we've seen different law reducing the privacy of people... and many exceptional law that are hijacked to target people who are political opponent but not terrorist (like a police raid without judge OK against peaceful ecologists, or using antiterrorist law to forbid some peacefull protest)
Even the normal law are "twisted" is a problematic way. Like arresting random protesters and keeping them for the night. Or arresting the leader of a group for a fake reason and then searshing his phone flat computer for intel...
FOr sure France is not a dictature, but things are not good and are not going in a good way
Of course most of the workers are against working for two more years with benefit for themselves.
Many people where against 35 hour workweek, more people where supporting the previous Macron attempt to make people work longer (but was seen as more fair, including to number 1 union)...
Presidential Monarch is a nice catch phrase, but it just contradicts itself for many reasons. Monarchs don't get elected. They don't step down from power after at most 2 terms. They don't have to deal with an assemblée nationale. Unless you think of some constitutional monarchies were the monarch has basically no powers. In both cases, it doesn't make sense.
I don't care if "quite 100%" of unionized people are in unions that were against the pension law, it doesn't tell anything reliable about their support. They mainly followed what the union told them. Same with polls, I don't care what they say as they are easily oriented, interpreted, ignored or promoted depending on opaque support from influential actors.
If only there was a reliable way for people to express their support and have some influence on who gets to rule... Hmmm, like votes and elections, maybe?Maybe we could call that democracy. We would equip it with super-rules, aka a constitution, that would define "democracy" with actual laws. Using the laws from the constitution isn't "twisting it". The ones doing some twisting are those who provoke massive outrage about something perfectly constitutional. There was a vote ultimately (actually several votes), called motion de censure, and the deputies against the reform couldn't form a majority. And I don't care it was only missing 9 votes, all the rules were followed. If you don't consider the rules should be the decider, then rules are meaningless. Then why bother with a constitution?
It's nice trying to think about how the constitution could define democracy differently that in the current one, but if you think that polls and unions should be part of the definition, it just doesn't make sense. The 5th republic was a response to the political instabilities that plagued France in the wake of the 2nd war, probably not helping France get a consistent stance against Nazi Germany. I don't see why it's attacked today, apart from some opportunistic reasons from actors with questionable and vague alternatives.
You are bundling many weak points together to make up for an actual strong one. "Many people are afraid to protest in France now.". Really? That's somewhat funny because according to unions, millions of people recently protested in France, for weeks. Are you sure you're not confusing with Russia? Protesting in France is not going anywhere, and outside of some twitter disinformation campaigns, people are more afraid of bad and violent actors mixing with the protesters, breaking and burning stuff, provoking police, than the police itself. Of course police is also guilty, their response can be completely inappropriate. But even then, is that because Macron is president? Do you think he personally orders the police to be violent? Why? I don't think he has anything to gain from increased police violence, as it's used against him by his political opponents. Attempts at forming a police brigade specialized against violent actors is possibly counter-productive. But what are you supposed to do when hundreds of people determined to burn something down for whatever political reasons are exercising power from violence and intimidation? And completely free from consequences? Are a few hundreds of radicalized people going to dictate what is allowed in a whole country? I don't know what the response should be, but it can't be giving up or blaming police every time.
Finally, I'm not sure where you heard about pressure against journalists from Macron, spying laws against them, or "terrorist" laws, but I'd be curious to know.
Presidential Monarch (that is a witty remark) means you get elected monarch, then there you have quite the power of a monarch, with little counter power, including now quite not having to deal with assemblée nationale (or just rarely). No other western democracy have such system giving that much power to one person. I think we can do better than this when it comes to democracy.
There are different election in France, including professional election, where you basically vote for a union that will represent you while you are not necessarily unionized.
Note that in 1789 our system would not be called a democracy, but a representative system. Note that Russia our Turkey have regular elections and a nice constitution. Of course I am not comparing France with those 2 countries, but it shows that election and a constitution elone are not enough, and that is the only thing you are mentioning.
France is not Russia of course, but I am often afraid in protest(being several time attacked by the police while peacefully demonstrating), and some of my friends did not joined me at some protest because of fear of the police. And we've seen negative change on how police handle protest under our last president (Hollande), but even more under Macron's rules. Germany, birthplace of Black Bloc, use less dangerous weapon and very different technique (based on deescalation).
About pressure against journalists, for sure we are not in Russia ! but there are regular alarming things... Twitter feed from Societe des journalistes or societe des Redacteur of mainstream newspaper can be a good source of information. Here just 3 random bits: https://www.telerama.fr/debats-reportages/l-espionnage-des-j... https://www.lemonde.fr/actualite-medias/article/2023/05/10/m... https://rsf.org/fr/petition-les-citoyens-ont-le-droit-de-man...
In the mean time, the French government is also sending out a call for projects [1] that increase cybersecurity, digital sovereignty and promote encryption of data. Just not for the common folk, but for startups.
I find it funny (/s) that my current project is funded by the French government to develop end-to-end encryption in web applications [2]. Am I a terrorist too?
[1] https://www.bpifrance.fr/nos-appels-a-projets-concours/appel...
> Am I a terrorist too?
Not yet, but give it time.
Not you but your users might be.
It's a good way to make everybody suspicious.
OK, I can see where they're coming from with things like Signal. Not that I agree, but at least I can understand the reasoning behind it.
But what is uBlock Origin's sin? A law-abiding citizen is supposed to be OK with seeing ads, or something?
Can someone who reads French please elaborate on what the linked piece is saying about it?
The investigation partly relies on notes seized from the defendants which mention various privacy tools: GrapheneOS, LineageOS, Signal, Silence, Jitsi, OnionShare, F-Droid, Tor, RiseupVPN, Orbot, uBlock Origin…
According to investigators: "these elements confirm they were willing to live clandestinely".
According to the prosecution: "these notes consituted a real playbook allowing anonymous use of a phone, showing the person was willing to live in secrecy and hide their activities".
> showing the person was willing to live in secrecy and hide their activities
Wait, is it illegal to *checks notes* have personal privacy?
absolutely disgusting, you're telling me that you don't want to be stalked 24/7? that you don't want the whole world to know everything you're doing? how dare you imply that you're a human being and that privacy is one of the most important rights you have? now dance monkey, dance /s
to quote professor farnsworth: I don't want to live on this planet anymore
Perhaps it's that mistrusting FAANG (advertisers and snoopers) is one of their grounds for suspicion.
Oh dear, they used to be able to monitor everything through alcatel backdoors.
I guess they lost that ability now, and are trying to criminalize private communication.
English version of the article doesn't mention uBlock Origin at all
https://www.laquadrature.net/en/2023/06/05/criminalization-o...
The French version (readable with a translation extension) does, but it's just one of a long list of things including GrapheneOS, LineageOS, Jitsi, FDroid, Tor, RiseupVPN, etc.
I must say I spluttered a bit at F-Droid.
uBlock Origin itself gave me oh what the fuck reaction but seems its gone now; text has been fixed already. No information on time of the edit was provided.
The french text has uBlock Origin still for me.
I still see it
Perhaps they reverted article back because an hour ago I was checking French text (thus my comment) in a new private window and uBlock wasn't mentioned and now indeed, it's there
I guess technically everyone is a potential terrorist
Someone who doesn't have a smartphone should be shot on sight - he must be a terrorist for sure.
A French judge managed to sentence some guy for not giving to the police the access codes to his phone.
He had no phone...
Do you have a link for this story? Not calling you a liar, just very curious to read the details.
10/10, laughed my head off
Maybe this is like a logic bomb but for authoritarians. Try to convince Macron or random police officers that they too are _potential_ terrorists and watch them go cross eyed.
not the real terrorists!
Related: The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web https://www.standard.co.uk/tech/fbi-recommends-ad-blocker-on...
"radioactive materials can be used to make bombs, let's ban them altogether"
"knifes can be used to stab people, let's ban them altogether"
"cleaning supplies can be used to poison people, let's ban them altogether"
#logik
also, potential = guilty until proven innocent
The British Medical Journal beat you to it:
The Home Office is looking for ways to reduce knife crime. We suggest that banning the sale of long pointed knives is a sensible and practical measure that would have this effect.
Wait until French figures out that bananas are radioactive. Every supermarket selling them will by raided by GIGN for selling nuclear weapons.
And now, the parliament is currently discussing a bill about forcing hardware manufacturers to include a remote switch in their products so that the mic and camera could be activated at distance by the authorities, so that the police can listen on potential terrorists[1].
This is fine…
[1]: https://www.francetvinfo.fr/societe/justice/le-senat-donne-s...
Incredible that they are dumb enough to believe that this can be enforced. We live in the EU, with free movement of goods and people, meaning that we can easily order our next electronic device from any other EU country that will not enforce this nonsense.
Of course, the next step will be you are shopping abroad == you are suspiciously close to being a terrorist.
On the other hand, I can see enough countries willing to support such a requirement, forcing an enforcement on a larger scale.
Moreover, I wonder how they can even force the manufacturers into making a custom solution for their hubris. Unless the idea of adding such a remote switch seduces Xi and now there's a big enough market for this feature to be developed…
The law does not force manufacturers to do anything, this is just pure fabrication from OP.
Terrorists are saying thank you as they are gluing their mics and putting electric tape on their cameras.
This article should be taken with care: La Quadrature Du Net is a stark defender of liberties (which is good, we need those more than ever), but I found they have a tendency to cherry-pick what aligns with their views to dramatic effect.
I'm not saying there is no cause for concern - there usually is - but more often than not they have this tendency to overlook some elements and overblow some others to serve their narrative.
My recommendation would be to carefully read the source material and cross-read other reports to form one's opinion.
There is a big cause for concern; our secret service deems anybody using encryption tools as a quasi-terrorist.
I agree there is cause for concern, I just find the narrative style to be of disservice and detracts from the issue, as it appears to me that the use of a catastrophist, panic-inducing, anger-laden tone and structure is a mechanism to buy people into their view through fear instead of reason, which in turn drives the wrong response for addressing the issue.
IOW the good part is that they're fact driven, the bad part is that they cherry-pick and use doomsday FUD-like tactics to drive their point home.
Let the frogs boil alive then?
There won't be The Day™ when the system goes authoritarian. It's a slope and one must panic at every step. If you wait for The Day, it will be too late.
Users of the telephone, the postal system are potentially terrorists. Users of speech in groups of two or more people are potentially conspirators. Simply to think is to be a potential terrorist.
this article miss a whole part of the story. among other things, these person came back from a warzone. looks at https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affaire_du_8_décembre_2020
Very interesting; it looks like these people went to Syria to fight ISIS, and got this ill treatment when they returned.
Why does it seem like the French government is always supporting the worst actors in any conflict? ISIS is (was) so evil and barbaric, they make Putin seem like a great guy. Why would volunteering to fight them ever be seen in a bad light?
There are basically two sides to this conflict: ISIS on one hand, and the Syrian/Kurdish PYD/YPG side on the other. The latter has ties to the PKK, which is an internationally recognized terror org just like ISIS.
Now, depending on who you ask, the PYD/YPG is "good, because they fight ISIS" (e.g. the official stance of the US) or "Terrorists, because they are basically just extensions of the PKK" (what Turkey says).
This leads to a lot of inconsistency in foreign policy within NATO. For example Sweden is pressured to crack down on PYD/YPG to be admitted into NATO. The US, like many others, have supported the YPG/PYD in the fight against ISIS. So I imagine Turkey is also pressuring other NATO countries like France in this case, to go after PKK collaborators including the adjacent syrian orgs.
So basically: why are the people volunteering to fight ISIS seen as terrorists within NATO? I'd guess these days to a large extent because Turkey says so.
I see Turkey as little better than Russia. They really don't belong in the EU or NATO.
>Why would volunteering to fight them ever be seen in a bad light?
In part, because the YPG is seen by the french state as a terrorist group, for various political reasons, and also because having leftists trained in handling weapons is seemingly more terrifying to the government than having neonazis trained in handling weapons. Make of that what you will.
The French government disbanded various far-right groups that were not "neonazis trained in handling weapons" (last in date was the Identitaires).
> the YPG is seen by the french state as a terrorist group
To appease the Turks I assume?
Someone taking weapons somewhere (regardless of the cause) is always a dangerous person. Regular soldiers included and the government treat them as such. It's an unfortunate position (of course) if that person is fighting on "your" side.
Yes, but the problem here is not that, it's the arguments used to build the case.
They have not been any evidence of criminal activities by those people. So far, all what they have against them is "they are protective about their privacy".
That's a terrible reason to arrest and maintain people in jail.
The act of going to Syria to fight on either side is a crime in itself.
Not according to the French law.
A crime is not something you evaluate morally. It has a very narrow definition that is codified by each society it is been judged in.
It's grounds for having your citizenship revoked unless it will render you stateless. People suspected of being on the way to Syria would get their passports confiscated.
Nine EU countries made similar rules, though I don't know how many still have it in effect. Any citizen/resident of Denmark is still prohibited from going to the conflict zones of Syria and Iraq.
Then why weren't they arrested for that instead?
I am not familiar with French law. Is that literally a crime or are you saying it as an expression?
Because it can be difficult to prove. There are/were no direct flights to Syria. So people would travel to Turkey and cross the land border to Syria.
Because government's really don't like their citizenry knowing how to apply violence, unless it's done through government controlled activities (ie military, police).
A cynical person would say it's because corrupt leaders are afraid of potential consequences for their actions. But there's likely other, more mundane reasons too. :)
Or course the French government doesn't support ISIS, they also monitored everyone who fought for them. The problem is that these people are (supposedly) radicalised, and with active military experience (and probable related PTSD), not who they fought against.
The monopoly on violence is the central component of the power of the state. This case undermines that power as much as violence used in self defence does, and is being prosecuted as passionately as self defence killings often are.
> and is being prosecuted as passionately as self defence killings often are.
Citation needed of self-defence killings im France being prosecuted passionately and unfairly.
Macron recently said he was opposed to the entire concept of self defence, after a farmer shot a burglar in his home and was subsequently charged with murder.
After that remark became massively controversial he attempted to walk his statement back and claim that he just meant that he said he was against the presumption of self defence (which seems to imply he supports a presumption of guilt in self defence cases).
https://www.europe1.fr/politique/oppose-a-la-legitime-defens...
Basically every country in the world that has somewhat stable law and order has a history of prosecuting dubious self defence cases. The requirement for the state to have a monopoly on violence might sound edgy, but it’s not a controversial idea, it’s a requirement for being able to enforce the law. Self defence is an almost universally justifiable reason for a person to violate the monopoly, and it’s not hard to understand why government agencies can end up viewing it as an existential threat, not to the country or its people, but to their own institutions.
I can corroborate (for any lurkers and onlookers) that the modern state having a monopoly on violence is an often-accepted idea.
For example, this is professor Wael Hallaq of Columbia University describing some defining characteristics of the modern state:
"there are five form-properties possessed by the modern state without which it cannot, at this point in history, be properly conceived. These are:
(1) its constitution as a historical experience that is fairly specific and local;
(2) its sovereignty and the metaphysics to which it has given rise;
(3) its legislative monopoly and the related feature of monopoly over so-called legitimate violence;
(4) its bureaucratic machinery; and
(5) its cultural- hegemonic engagement in the social order, including its production of the national subject"
https://www.dalloz-actualite.fr/interview/vanessa-codaccioni...
90% of self defense cases end in the tribunal, meaning that the judges saw it as not-self-defense. The biggest factor in all this is proportionality: if you killed someone in self defense but were not yourself having your life threatened, you will go to court.
Any physical assault is potentially life threatening. One unlucky fall on the pavement and that's it - you can easily die or become permanently disabled. Yet another reason why it's better to deescalate and/or run away if possible.
Yep, and this is the logic that is followed by judges: self defense is pretty much only valid if you had no other option. Run away. Always run away.
> self defense is pretty much only valid if you had no other option.
Running away is a good idea for many reasons, but very few US states or foreign jurisdictions have a duty to retreat as you’re describing here.
Good thing this was in the context of France, then.
And France is among the overwhelming majority of legal jurisdictions around the world that do not have a duty to retreat.
https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI0000...
The monopoly is on the legitimate claim to force, and is based on Max Weber.
David Runciman has an excellent explanation of this in the "Talking Politics" podcast which I recommend unreservedly: <https://play.acast.com/s/history-of-ideas/weberonleadership>
(Specific segment occurs ~15 minutes in.)
That podcast does have an interesting explanation of the idea, and Max Weber did provide interesting insights into it. But the governments exerting monopolistic control over violence (to differing levels at different times and places) goes back basically as far as organised society does. The legitimate claim to violence in self defence is just as ubiquitous and has always been at least philosophically at odds with the claim of the state. With that contention arise from the fact that a claim to violence in self defence must either arise from a failure of the state to perform its duties in upholding law and order, or a failure of the individual to follow the law. With the potential for controversy arising from the fact that it’s largely the state who gets to decide whether it was at fault, or if the individual in question was.
Again, you are excluding the critical phrase legitimate claim, which is at the heart of Weber's definition. That is, the right and legitimacy of that right, is restricted to the state, or an entity acting in the effective capacity of a state, whatever it happens to call itself.
Absent this, one of three conditions exist:
1. There is no monopoly. In which case violence is widespread, and there is no state.
2. There is no legitimacy. In which case violence is capricious.
3. Some non-state power or agent assumes the monopoly on legitimate violence. In which case it becomes, by definition The State.
You might want to consider what a "state" which lacks a monopoly on the legitimate claim to the monopoly on force would look like. To what other entity would it cede that legitimate claim, and/or how would it prevent other entities from enacting capricious violence, as has occurred from time to time in the world, and even now.
The state's claim is to legitimacy. A capricious exercise would be an abrogation of legitimacy
Weber, Max (1978). Roth, Guenther; Wittich, Claus (eds.). Economy and Society. Berkeley: U. California Press. p. 54.
<https://archive.org/details/economysociety00webe/page/54/mod...>
The "monopoly on violence" or "monopoly on force" short-hands are a much more recent emergence, and seem to originate with Murray Rothbard (1960s) and Robert Nozick (1970s), though widespread usage of that phrase really only begins to take off after 1980, per Google's Ngram Viewer: <https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=monopoly+on+vi...>
That shorthand has become quite popular, and is often cited by Libertarians as key to their adopting that particular ideology.[1] As expressed by them the formulation is both incorrect and misleading.
________________________________
Notes:
1. E.g., Penn Jillette, <https://www.newsweek.com/penn-jillette-how-became-libertaria...> and Charles Koch <https://www.newsweek.com/penn-jillette-how-became-libertaria...>.
I think you’re really putting the kart before the horse here. It’s certainly not true that no legitimate governments existed prior to the 20th century, regardless of what particular phrases may be been invented to describe them during that time. Just like gravity existed long before Newton managed to come up with a sensible description of it. You also almost get to describing the actual reality of the situation, but not quite, which is that a monopoly on violence and a state are the same thing. All states emerged when some group attempted to assert a monopoly over violence, and whether they fail or succeed in becoming a state comes down to their ability to monopolise violence. The status of legitimacy here is entirely subjective, and if it’s called into question, the only way it’s ever falsified is if some other group successfully challenges that monopoly.
Well this isn't the first time in recent history the French government was a supporter of genocide:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_and_the_Rwandan_genocid...
France did not support the genocide, they just didn't do much at all apart from accepting refugies, also confirmed by more recent declassified papers.
Do you really think France supports ISIS ? Did you live in a cave in 2015 ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2015_Île-de-France_att...
Fighting for a foreign nation or mercenaries is illegal, no matter if you're fighting the "bad guys"
Hmm, let me check in again with France… Oh, what, they have a thing called the Foreign Legion, where they want foreigners to fight for them? It seems like actually France wants people to fight for nations that aren’t their own.
I'm French, I know the foreign legion, we accept foreigners in our army, it doesn't mean we accept our own citizen to fight for foreign parties, especially non state armies, they're not mutually exclusive, there is no logical connection between your two statements
From a moral viewpoint, letting someone of your country join another country’s foreign legion is identical to letting someone of another country join your foreign legion. If you say that joining a different group to fight ISIS is not okay while joining France to fight France’s enemies is okay, then you’re saying that ISIS is a better group in the world than France’s enemies.
> If you say that joining a different group to fight ISIS
Like joining the Taliban ?
Viewing with suspicion someone who volunteers to fight in a foreign war does not imply support for any party in that war. We can criticize the French government but it’s an extreme exaggeration to suggest that they support ISIS.
An important detail is that the state has been condemned for that.
This goes to show that France is not a totalitarian regime. The government fucked up, justice, as an independent power punished it and the illegally detained suspect is now free. The whole story is freely reported by French media.
So is it bad: yes. Is it tolerated and are dissenters being silenced: no.
For the rest, we will have to wait until the trial, but if the accusers don't have anything better than the use of Signal and uBlock, it probably won't end well for them, even if they represent the government.
When half of internet users are potential terrorists, no one is.
Or, in the eyes of the government, we all are
This is accurate, I just came from our local monthly terrorist meet-up and everyone was talking about how France is so unfriendly to us.
So I guess the French government doesn't use encryption, otherwise ...
What about HTTPS? Suspicious.
Isn't HTTPS required by GDPR?
So union mandated terrorism?
Nothing an EU mandated root cert won't fix.
They certainly try to do just that. I am ready to purge that cert and hope browsers would get forked quickly.
Not explicitly, and even then it would only cover the transfer of personal data.
Clearly the EU is a terrorist organization /s
Wasn't there a time when French FidoNet could not exchange zipped mail, because that would be considered encryption? Maybe my memory is inventing things though.
I'm not sure, but encryption was outlawed entirely in France until 1999 or so: https://www.theregister.com/1999/01/15/france_to_end_severe_...
I laughed at this part:
>French minister for the economy and finance, Domenica Strauss-Khan, has said she wishes to liberalise
Dominique Strauss-Kahn (they also butchered his last name) is definitely not a woman (but it's a "mixed" name indeed, that both men and women can have).
Back in those days it was also illegal to share radio frequencies used by the military (since comms were not always encrypted; details about frequency and modulation were secret), and a guy got prosecuted for doing just that.
The US isn't immune either.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/boston-college-prompt-...
My French is basically inexistant, but are they saying that attempting to protect your privacy is an indication that you might be a terrorist?
DeepL works great FR-EN.
Basically yes
The constitute project [1] (which I just discovered and seems like a fantastic initiative) offers a way to compare what different countries' constitutions say about citizen's right to privacy. Apparently 174 countries have some provision that is in force. France does not appear at all on this topic. Not sure if its some technical / linguistic reason.
[1] https://www.constituteproject.org/constitutions?lang=en&key=...
Leaving aside the supposedly technical ineptitude of the French authorities (even though I think they're quite competent and that they full know what those apps do and how they work), cases like this one make me think that, going forward, one of the best strategies for "defeating" the powers that be will consist in avoiding the use of encrypted communications via special apps and the like and trying to blend in with how the general population, i.e. the normies, communicates.
Of course that the message will still need to be encrypted in a way, but that won't happen by using Telegram or Signal or WhatsApp or by encrypting your hard-drive using dedicated software, but the new "encryption" should work in a sort of "out in the open for anyone to see way", like in the famous E. A. Poe The Purloined Letter [1] short-story, with the stolen letter that was "hidden" in plain view for everyone to see.
Again, I realise that this new strategy isn't ideal, that it will most likely make it harder to keep constant the rate of encrypted communication that is now carried out using dedicated apps, but the reality on the ground is that by using Telegram or Signal or any other dedicated app that focuses on technical encryption one just manages to paint a target on his/her back.
These guys are up to no good and intentionally misuse the loaded language. Because it's loaded.
-----
terrorism
noun
the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.
"the fight against terrorism"
Technically they're correct. The same way as users of toilets are potential terrorists.
What is really appaling and frightening here is the level of ignorance, incompetence and technical illiteracy shown by the various magistrates, and how they can be manipulated by the storytelling. Unfortunately, I think it's fair to say that it's representative of the general level of expertise in the french judicial system. Want some laughs ? Look for "Olivier Laurelli", "Altice vs reflet.info"...
Sounds like you might need uBlock Origin to protect yourself from the French government.
French government needs to be re-acquainted with guillotine
Oh yeah i definitively am a POTENTIAL terrorist... and if the nations of the allegedly free world are keeping their trajectory regarding encryption and civil rights there might even come a day to turn form POTENTIAL to ACTUAL...
Well, if some dipshit in a costume is gonna show up and point a gun at me for using open source software of my choice, I just may contemplate responding with violence, possibly in a coordinated manner.
Governments would be wise, so long as I'm not doing anything to hurt anyone else, to mind their own business and fuck off.
Don't make me get out my AR-15 with its standard rapacity 45rd mag
Will it be paving the way of replacing French government with a sixth form of republic or a 25th form of a government?
I mean, we all know that president dissolving the parliment/congress/house is an unworkable mechanism for a sustainable government.
A government that is afraid of its citizens is the right kind of governance: it keeps them within their expected functions: "expected" is the operative word.
We changed the URL from https://www.laquadrature.net/2023/06/05/affaire-du-8-decembr... to the translation, which was suggested by a reader. Thanks!
Most people want a simple answer to complex questions, the truth is that the French government is hundreds of people. Some sponsor e2ee projects to protect the people, while others consider use of such projects to be indicators of terrorism. Not the only indicators of course, but definitely something investigators might react to.
Terrorists in France from a few years ago used text messages and PSP groups to communicate. Game over grandmas and gamers.
I mean, everyone is a potential terrorist - so since putting everyone in prison is obviously not practical, maybe the politicians should put themselves in prison then hold a committee meeting on redefining the terms "inside" and "outside" to make themselves feel better.
French government seems to think you can avoid an far-right upheaval by becoming the far-right themselves.
Leftists can be authoritarian too
I seem to remember I was on the FBI watch list for subscribing to Linux Journal back in the day.
And how did you find out about that?
That does not contain the words "FBI" or "watch"
Everyone is a potential terrorist. Precriminals guilty of precrime.
le haha! I just re-installed! Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time!
"I fart in your general direction." </ObMontyPythonOutrageousFrenchAccent>
I support some protests in France, this is what fueled the state we have today with is social safety nets.
I do not support the protests that destroy public and private property.
Someone who supports such violence should have their house destroyed and looted and then affirm "well done!". Somehow this does not happen.
Neither the leaders who support squatting do not advertise their house address and when they go for vacation to incite the squatters to take their house and make it a trashbin.
There are different ways to protest but when you go for violence do not be surprised you get violence back (including non physical).
This is not talked to any political wing - as someone said the extremes usually meet.
I have great respect for Quadrature du Net but bear in mind they are almost extrem left and whatever govt say they will be against...
True, but they are very serious and diligent in their actions.
They have been nothing but rational and respectful in everything they have done so far.
You can see it in the writing of the article, it's methodical, logical, and rely strongly on facts through quoting documents.
This have been consistent for years, something I give them a lot of credits for.
Besides, no matter the political orientation of the govt, I think it's safe to say no group at the top was not worth of opposition during the last decades. So it's nice to have movements like La Quadrature that keep them in check.
No, their bias is grotesque. They make it sound like the DGSI bothered monitoring some dudes because they are using uBlock origins, lmfao.
For the US guys here, the equivalent would be the FBI tracking down a few guys back from Afghanistan, monitoring who they talk to, see that they are curious about how to make bombs, how to encrypt your communications, etc, and write an article saying "oh look, the FBI thinkgs that buying sugar at the supermarket is suspicious", because among 1000 other evidence, the FBI at some point noted that "individual bought ingredients to a make a bomb and bought 25kg of sugar".
That would be true if prosecution have shown evidences of criminal activities on the side of protecting their privacy.
But they didn't.
That's the red flag.
I mean yes, in the same sense that people who use computers are potential terrorists. Seriously these BS claims should be shut down.
I mean… the list of things is ridiculous: simply using VPN, having technical documentation? So any type of technical literacy…
Regardless of which digital tools they use, everyone is a potential terrorist if the government is tyrannical enough.
We should ask Signal users to prove the negative, or less be deemed guilty and subject to sanctioning.
Hammers, knives, baseball bats, plastic bags, string, shovels…
…automobiles, rental-vans…
People who track and profile me online are potential terrorists
Many officials use these daily on their personal devices
Duh. _Everyone_ is a potential terrorist.
Only terrorists block ads.
glad to know that every reddtor and gamer is a terrorist to the fr*nch
I mean, isn’t everybody?
so using uBlock is much worse than being a politician?
lol I use uBlock Origin
uBlock especially
can confirm.
Url changed from https://www.laquadrature.net/2023/06/05/affaire-du-8-decembr..., which points to this.
It is worth remembering that France got its current constitution in a bloodless coup:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1958_crisis_in_France
It amazes me that the constitution that was put in place then is largely unchanged today, insofar as the French president is still incredibly powerful, parliament is subservient, and the electoral system is deeply majoritarian.
I don't know exactly what it says about a society that it keeps a constitution that was imposed this way, but it isn't anything good. The frank craziness in this article (F-Droid, lol) is in keeping with that.
The president who set up this constitution is the only president who stepped down on his own after losing a vote at the Senate. I think you are a bit weak on the intricacies of the French political system/history, not even mentioning the fact that if you want to play that game, pretty much any political system was never self-generated and was by definition kickstarted by another system previously...
No, the President in France has little power.
1. He can call for new elections of the Assembly (not of the Senate) ;
2. He names the Prime Minister and chooses to accept or not the government the Prime Minister then proposes ;
3. He's got minor powers regarding foreign policy.
And that's it.
Now what goes against the President:
a. Regarding [2.] which may seem a major power: the Prime Minister and his government can be kicked out basically at any moment by a vote of the Assembly. So there is no way the President could pick a Prime Minister and a government that doesn't suit the Assembly. Basically, the Assembly has the last word on it, and keeps this power all along the legislature.
b. The government decides and leads the policy (politics?) of the nation (article 20: «Le Gouvernement détermine et conduit la politique de la nation.»): the President is not supposed to have a say about it.
c. Once the President has named the Prime Minister, he cannot remove him. Nor can he remove any other minister. Only the Assembly can do it.
The problem is not the constitution. The problem is that the constitution hasn't got a sacred role as in the USA, and everyone in the various positions of power wipes his ass with it.
So, all what gradually happened more and more in the last few years, is Members of the Parliament voluntarily de facto abdicating their powers to the Government, and members of the Government voluntarily de facto abdicating their powers to the President. In the end they mostly take orders from above and act and vote as they are told to. Just because they enjoy their seat...
As a French, we tend to change political regimes every so often. Since 1789 we've had five republics, two empires and a couple of other things. I would bet that I'll outlive the fifth republic because of that.
If anything, keeping the same constitution for more than 230 years is a horrifying thought to me.