141–150 of 561 posts
[flagged]
Law doesn't seek to punish but to rehabilitate. Act of taking freedom away from the criminal is violent enough. Treating them badly is just a sign of unfair/poor society that cannot maintain (afford to keep) it's promise to be civil to all citizens.
Then who is tasked with delivering justice to the victims?
[flagged]
Unfortunately, the trend for more rule based order has reversed. European governments are all struggling when the "who cares about rules" governments are full steam ahead. Even if they have net negative approval, they have plenty of fanatical supporters, they hold full narrative control through the media which is owned by their super rich allies. Oh and by the way this is happening because the "rule based world" folks screwed up and weren't fair either.
It's going to be worse before it gets better. The west is going through a phase and all I hope is that would be too destructive. Thankfully, the world isn't made just from "the west", so I guess its not the end for the humanity - yet.
So is this a criminal president receiving justice, or a politically motivated prosecution?
Difficult to say. Even if indeed guilty, things like jailing him "provisionally" despite his appeal are discretionary decisions of the court so also open to all interpretations despite the very black and white comments here...
But now he is also the subject of his own policies and it does not like that. Looks like justice is ok just when it is not affecting him personally.
His attitude is totally disgusting and indecent.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a "half empty" kind of person and seeing how much support he's still getting is quite sad to see. Karine Le Marchand expressing her support is one thing, identifiyng herself as being part of the same caste as Sarkozy, but seeing the same support from regular folks, who have most certainly been screwed over by the ex-President...
It's amazing how all these conservatives who want to be tough on crime change their minds when it comes to one of their friends.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
Article 3 ECHR should prevent the prison authorities from putting any prisoner in a position where they know he's going to "get roughed up". You and I both want that right for ourselves, so surely we should also extend it to Sarzoky?
Since a few days, there is an abundance of cover and articles in most major newspaper here with propaganda and repeated lies supporting him. It's hard to imagine but non stop. You have everyday interviews of his family saying that it is an injustice, that he did nothing, that the judgement was rigged, that he was a great men that served France and so should not be treated like everyone else. Article about how sad the poor family is. Number of articles repeating friends of him verbatim s that the judgement was fake.
Almost none speaking about the facts, the grounds for his sentence, the big number of other trials against him that are running. And also the other definitive convictions he got. Like for attempting to bribe a head prosecutor to get insider info about his case. Using a prepaid line opened with a fake name...
But what you see in the end is that 90% of medias in France belongs to a few wealthy families that are friends with him.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Article 3 ECHR should prevent the prison authorities from putting any prisoner in a position where they know he's going to "get roughed up". You and I both want that right for ourselves, so surely we should also extend it to Sarzoky?
[flagged]
I'm just pointing out that the golden rule requires us to offer human rights even to people who we might think are scum. Because that's the only way to secure those rights for ourselves.
So is this a criminal president receiving justice, or a politically motivated prosecution?
The current sentence is for the illegal financing of his presidential campaign to the tune of 50 million euro, which is well above the legal cost cap. Although the amounts are benign compared to the amount of bribery seen in the US presidential runs, it is still unfair democratically and should be punished harshly accordingly. Interestingly, this case isn't motivated by financial greed, as in bribery for his own financial interests, but by power, i.e., help win the presidential election.
It should be noted that most of the bigger parties are known to have "alternative" accounting tricks so you can be certain that they also don't fully respect the funding cap, but they probably get away with differences (that we know of/suspect) of a few (tens of?) percent.
Sarkozy was not only well, well above that, with order O(200%), it was also done with money coming from a known dictator: Gaddafi. This brings a lot of interesting additional ethical questions to the table. Such as: what was the quid pro quo expected from such a payment? Or: what role did it play in Sarkozy ordering the bombing of Libya?
It could also be considered politically motivated in the sense that the judges themselves are not a-political (and it's fully in their rights to have a political opinion) and that some of the high-profile cases in the past have been handled by judges of a different political leaning. And without putting the impartiality of the justice system into doubt, some questions have been raised when some of the judges were a bit too vocal in the criticism of their political opponents.
And in parallel, although the judiciary system in France theoretically acts independently from the executive branch, the zones of influence are a bit murky and there are some indirect ways through which some pressure can be exerted onto the judges to facilitate, or in other cases slow down some cases.
So you could be certain that such a high-profile case was not done without the go-ahead of the executive. In that sense, it can be considered politically motivated.
Which doesn't mean Sarkozy shouldn't go to prison. He absolutely should. But please also clean-up all the other crooks, and go strongly after those that enriched themselves at the cost of the country. There are plenty of them, with lots of low-hanging fruit.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Law doesn't seek to punish but to rehabilitate. Act of taking freedom away from the criminal is violent enough. Treating them badly is just a sign of unfair/poor society that cannot maintain (afford to keep) it's promise to be civil to all citizens.
Your confounding how things should be with how they are. These are two distinct philosophies, only one of which is relevant in most of the real world, unfortunately.