Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 561 posts

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#341

Post by GeoAtreides »

lenkite wrote: post #337
GeoAtreides wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a complete non-sequitur. Btw, I've seen chinese tankies and I've seen russian tankies. First time I see a gadaffian tankie.

Maybe speak to some ex-Libyans then ? The security and economic stability compared to continuous civil war and chaos - which caused far more atrocities and deaths tends to change one's opinion on NATO sponsored regime change very fast. Millions of your so-called "gadaffi tankies" out there - just not much in the Western world. But keep thumping yourself on the chest. What do all the deaths and suffering matter ? The…

I was born and raised in one of the most authoritarian regimes in Europe. I know what totalitarian regimes do, and I experienced the crushing poverty that followed the demise of such a regime.

The crimes of the Gaddafi regime are one thing, the ensuing chaos is another. We celebrate the end of a brutal regime and we despair at the death and destruction that followed.

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#342

Post by wtcactus »

tauwauwau wrote: post #110
yard2010 wrote: post #82

[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.

An eye for an eye makes the all world go blind. But, one eye for both eyes quickly renders the all bad actors of society blind and incapable of harming the law abiding citizens.

It’s not fancy around these parts to give the example of El Salvador, because most of us live in a very comfortable bubble and can pretend we support all these fancy thing of “reintegration and not punishment” but go ask what the people in El Salvador think about how their country got rid of criminal violence.

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#343

Post by mothballed »

carefulfungi wrote: post #228
rat9988 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Law doesn't seek to punish Then who is tasked with delivering justice to the victims?

The core point of organized justice is to prevent blood feuds and long-running inter-personal or tribal conflict. Essentially, to interrupt or prevent a cycle of violence. Justice is reaching consensus on a set of facts and then ascertaining an appropriate compensation. That compensation can include a loss of freedom, a monetary payment, mandated service hours, or historically - torture and death. But what matters is…

Systems that seek to reduce conflict and compensate victims did not historically make much use of imprisonment.

For a modern look at this, look at the xeer system of Somalia, where victims will almost always prefer payment/compensation over punishment.

Imprisonment is largely an invention of the state, as they push victims and inter-personal conflict aside, and rather use their tools to subordinate the citizen to the order of the state and then charge the victim taxpayers the cost of imprisonment and funnel the money into their buddies running and working the prisons.

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#344

Post by mattnewton »

greatgib wrote: post #146

Something really scary in France right now is that you can see really clearly how most mainstream media are used for propaganda. 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…

Always has been, for those willing to pay for smart and unscrupulous people to manipulate the news. People must know this is what is happening but they are still seduced by the media. The brilliant Chicago press conference musical number comes to mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBM82Ju2kJU and the source material there was essentially the same techniques working to making murderers sympathetic, in 1924.

At least in France he’ll serve a sentence- in the US we might have elected him again and let him make the charges go away.

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#345

Post by adolph »

Foobar8568 wrote: post #276
Aurornis wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since a few days, there is an abundance of cover and articles in most major newspaper here with propaganda and repeated lies supporting him. How much of this is driven by contrarian and counter-cyclical reporting? I’m not familiar with French media, but I see the same pattern in every country where I’ve kept up with the news: Media starts being favorable to a topic when it’s up and coming, switching to being highly…

French media are owned by his literal relatives, one (Bouygues, owner of the largest French /media? With TF1 etc.) being the witness of one of his wedding and godfather of his son Louis. The other son is married to the heir of Darty/FNAC. I don't remember where Dassault (major newspaper owner) fits but they were both close as well.

Dassault (major newspaper owner)

Is that like Lockheed Martin owning a major newspaper or GE owning a TV network?

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#346

Post by kakwa_ »

Aurornis wrote: post #216
greatgib wrote: post #146

Something really scary in France right now is that you can see really clearly how most mainstream media are used for propaganda. 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…

> Since a few days, there is an abundance of cover and articles in most major newspaper here with propaganda and repeated lies supporting him. How much of this is driven by contrarian and counter-cyclical reporting? I’m not familiar with French media, but I see the same pattern in every country where I’ve kept up with the news: Media starts being favorable to a topic when it’s up and coming, switching to being highly…

No, it's not some kind of clickbait strategy to drive views. Driving an agenda is.

Most of French media, specially newspapers, are money sinks only surviving because they are useful to push the rent-seeking business or ideological agenda of their owners (Dassault, Bouygues, Lagardere, Arnault, Bettencourt, Saade, Pinault, Niel).

Also, just for context, Martin Bouygues, Bernard Arnault and Vincent Bollore, the respective owners of TF1 (main French TV channel), Le Parisien (major newspaper) and CNews/Europe1 (major TV channel & radio) are personal friends of Sarkozy (a la "witness at your wedding, god father of your son or let's celebrate your election on my yacht" kind of way).

The Figaro (main right-wing newspaper in France) and its owners, the Dassault family, are also not far away.

Seeing the Figaro website was actually quite funny. Because the evidences are so damming, their main page was textbook "how to propagate fake news with plausible deniability". It was mainly pro-Sarkozy Editorials/Tribunes from non-journalists people, articles titled with quotes from Sarkozy's supporters and the few articles actually on the case were about the side stories.

French press ownership map:

https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/cartes/PPA#&gid=1&pid=1

There are only two truly independent major media left in France: Mediaparte (the ones we have to thanks for Sarkozy's well deserved condemnations) and Le Canard Enchaine (a bunch of scandals, but lately, the "Affaire Fillion").

The rest is either owned by billionaires, state run, or is far smaller and doesn't have the aura, size & credibility to reveal such scandals.

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#347

Post by FridayoLeary »

h1fra wrote: post #295
greatgib wrote: post #146

Something really scary in France right now is that you can see really clearly how most mainstream media are used for propaganda. 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…

As always, france is always just 5-10 years behind US craziness.

US is 5-10 years ahead of Europe. MAGA is coming to France and the UK unless things change. In the UK the Conservatives and Starmer have seen to it. There are literally 2 things people in the UK want to see and both parties are stubbornly ignoring it, while failing to enact any policies that can actually help people. Meanwhile Starmer is becoming more authoritarian by the day. Trump didn't happen in a vacuum, ignore your electorate for too long and eventually they will respond.

The incredible successes of Trumps second term so far will encourage and empower populists everywhere.

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#348

Post by tekbruh9000 »

greatgib wrote: post #146

Something really scary in France right now is that you can see really clearly how most mainstream media are used for propaganda. 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…

Something really scary is people believing what's printed or filed in court as fact without bearing witness.

Faith based society is not just the domain of the religious. 1984 been the norm since well before Orwell wrote the book.

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#349

Post by thatfrenchguy »

greatgib wrote: post #146

Something really scary in France right now is that you can see really clearly how most mainstream media are used for propaganda. 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…

> 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.

The only way the current wave of right-wing media ends if by finding a new way to fund media & making it impossible to concentrate in the ends of a few rich folks.

And good luck with that, folks don't want to pay for media.

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#350

Post by agumonkey »

khamidou wrote: post #252
ytNumbers wrote: post #214

There is no excuse for corruption. However, everyone in all countries should ask themselves whether or not most of the representatives in their congress/parliament would, if investigated, be found guilty of the same sort of corruption. Power corrupts.

If you read up on this story, you'd find out it's not run off the mill corruption. Sarkozy actually conspired with a foreign state – in particular with someone who directed a terror attack that killed 50 french citizens (!) – to fund his campaign.

This among a list of shady things like unauthorized spying. The man is not on his first rodeo
Post reply on HN