Canadian military saw pandemic as opportunity to test propaganda techniques

>The point of those restrictions was to stop people from meeting, at all.

Yes, the insidious and damaging idea that meeting people at all is dangerous, as we are all disease-ridden carriers of death. When I made a complaint at work that the Covid policies were making the workplace demoralising and miserable, the head of the Health and Safety committe specifically told me that government guidance was to "eliminate conversations". How is this at all healthy for us as a society?

You're also still taking about planes and trains, when I was asking how does that justify being literally shut in my house. Saying that, I understand your point of view. Covid is so bad, that absolutely no risk of passing it must be tolerated, and policy should be set accordingly.

Without even talking of the most famous colonial wars during which these techniques were developed (Indochine, Algeria), the French army has repeatedly massacred its citizens during the Paris commune in 1871 (10-50k dead) [0] or during the may first demonstration in Fourmies in 1891 (9 dead) [1].

Nowadays the army is still used against the population but rarely with actual bullets. The police has a much bigger killing record (including during demonstrations), but at least two anarchists i know of were killed by explosive grenades thrown by the military police (gendarmerie) during ecological protests: Vital Michalon in 1977 (physics teacher) [2] and Rémi Fraisse in 2014 (botanist) [3].

Even more recently, during the Gilets Jaunes protests, the army's anti-terrorist patrols (Sentinelle) were redeployed by the government to defend key buildings/institutions from a potential revolution. That move was criticized both by soldiers who said it was not their role, and by opposition parties. They even deployed the Gendarmerie's armored tanks in Paris, which was a first. [5] Despite teargas being banned by the Geneva convention against chemical weapons, these tanks were equipped with stronger chemicals, which the government denied, before acknowledging its existence (they did not use this "powder" during the protests). [6]

On the countryside, especially in rural land occupations against GPII (Grands Projets Industriels et Imposées, or Grand and Imposed Industrial Projects), also known as ZADs [7], the Gendarmerie (military police) is heavily deployed, both regular "Gendarmerie Mobile" units as well as "PSIG". These units PSIG units, involved in fast deployment for crushing popular dissent on the countryside, were 37 in 1978, 138 in 1988, 310 in 2000 and 370 in 2015 [8], so we can say that aspect of counter-insurrection apparatus is growing. In Bure, where the local population is opposing the construction of an underground nuclear storage facility [9], there are more stationed gendarmes (both GM and PSIG) than there are inhabitants, and the operation has often been described as a military occupation [10] unseen since WWII. You have road blocks and mobile patrols doing ID checks on everyone, and the local forest has been privatized and is heavily guarded, and local residents have been regularly fined for just taking a walk in the forest. It is not uncommon for the local population to be ID-checked 3 times going to the supermarket and back. More information about this struggle against industrial capitalism can be found here [11].

This is just for France. In more democratic countries, the situation may be different. But i know in America (north and south) the situation is very similar with the national guard (or equivalent) called to crush popular insurrections against injustice, corruption police brutality, and privatization of public/indigenous land.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusillade_de_Fourmies [2] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vital_Michalon [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9mi_Fraisse [4] https://www.francetvinfo.fr/economie/emploi/metiers/armee-et... [5] https://img.lemde.fr/2018/12/08/0/0/2000/1333/1872/1246/30/0... [6] https://paris-luttes.info/macron-pret-a-utiliser-des-armes-1... [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_to_Defend [8] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peloton_de_surveillance_et_d%2...

[9] The storage is not operational yet, and there has already been serious injuries and collapses, so the inhabitants are concerned that the engineers promising the facility will store nuclear content safely for >10K years have no clue what they're talking about.

[10] https://reporterre.net/Bure-En-Meuse-nous-vivons-sous-occupa...

[11] https://bureburebure.info/category/english/

Yes, previous epidemics were more deadly, but also easier to contain because:

1) cases were symptomatic

2) incubation period was lower

So the effectiveness of quarantines and lockdowns was much higher and easier to measure ( we have no more visibly sick people, and it's been like this for a week, everything is OK).

> Also, the 2020 quarantines arrived at a time where global resource inequalities were at unprecedented levels in human history, and when popular insurrections were growing across the planet (Liban, France, Soudan, etc),

I can't comment on Lebanon and Sudan, but in France you're flat out wrong.

There were the Gilets Jeunes, whose numbers were falling all through 2019 and were at less than 100k before the protests against the retirement reform, which were sometimes done in coordination [0]. In any case, the numbers for february are at 10-30k protestors, which is nothing for a country of 67 million inhabitants.

> which was confirmed by the lack of sanitary measures from most governments, including the French government who during the pandemic cut public hospitals budgets by 800M€, continued to shut down hospital beds while the bodies were piling up, and covered up their failures (such as destroying the national mask stocks before the pandemic) via heavy propaganda campaigns.

Again, you're flat out wrong. Hospital beds were reorganised and more emergency ones were added - this is why during the third wave hospitals in many regions were over "original capacity"; in Ile de France we got to ~140% if memory serves me right[1]. Mask stocks have been falling since 2009, so you can't pin that on the current government[2].

> Finally, opposition to the quarantines was fueled by how unevenly the measures were applied. Government officials and rich people have been publicly documented eating in restaurants and throwing parties, while common people like you and me were routinely beaten up by the police, fined or detained, for daring to go out and breathe fresh air (which here in France was illegal by decree for most of the 1st quarantine, before that was relaxed).

It wasn't illegal to go and breathe fresh air, there was just a distance limit from your home.

> but they sure played a role in giving more facts to the population to know for sure the government can't be trusted to protect the local population (at least here in France).

That's funny, because the government's approval was very high during the initial waves, and Macron's is still higher than before the pandemic[3]. Not only that, but he's the first one since Chirac to have such a high approval this late into his term.

Honestly i think the French government's action was among the best possible ( and obviously i'm not the only one if Macron's ratings are any indication); at any case, they were really trying to strike a fine balance. No lockdowns on the third wave, keeping schools open, financial help, etc.

0 - https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9roulement_du_mouvement_...

1 - https://www.data.gouv.fr/fr/datasets/synthese-des-indicateur...

2 - https://www.lemonde.fr/sante/article/2020/05/07/la-france-et...

3 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_on_the_Emmanue...