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French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

bbc.com

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Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#351

Post by lenkite »

GeoAtreides wrote: post #341
lenkite wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Did your nation encounter the same scale of calamity that Libya did ? I think not - it is easy to "celebrate" the end of a brutal regime when you don't have to pay the price.

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#352

Post by mattnewton »

orionsbelt wrote: post #294
dijit wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a much less charitable view than you about Elizabeth Holmes. The fact that a new publicist was hired by her before all the sympathetic press started coming out is enough for me to believe that there's a link there and not a natural news swing cycle. https://www.theverge.com/news/611549/elizabeth-holmes-people...

I don’t have a strong enough view here to have an opinion, but I think someone as rich as her always had a publicist, so to play devils advocate, it may be true that the press only played ball with the publicist after she was convicted.

Elizabeth Holmes had some very big fish as investors she ended up defrauding, so it’s possible the devil’s best advocates were busy advocating she go to jail before her sentence.

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#353

Post by FridayoLeary »

add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #275
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…

If you think that's scary, imagine a country where the corrupt ex-president doesn't even go to jail at all.

Imagine a country where every level of the judiciary and law enforcement is used to persecute a president, with cases so weak that they fall apart on their own, or are so obviously politicised it turns everyone against said systems, even if there is substance to the claims. But he still wins the popular vote, because he is so good and everyone else is so bad.

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#354

Post by thelastgallon »

VHRanger wrote: post #291
thelastgallon wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the food in prison should be good? Croissants, etc made by french chefs? There might be another french revolution if they import cooks from america, russia or north korea just for people in prison.

American food would be cruel & unusual punishment

The Eighth Amendment (Amendment VIII) to the United States Constitution protects against imposing excessive bail, excessive fines, or cruel and unusual punishments. This amendment was adopted on December 15, 1791, along with the rest of the United States Bill of Rights.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Eighth_Amendment_...

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#355

Post by littlestymaar »

kzrdude wrote: post #47
littlestymaar wrote: post #8

For context, it's not even the first time he's condemned, but this time the crime was sever enough so he couldn't avoid prison. He delayed the case enough (almost 13 years) so that he's now more than 70 though and I doubt he stays to long in prison because of his age. But it's nice to see that he couldn't run away from justice forever and is finally in jail.

I think you should say convicted instead of condemned. It's not really wrong, but condemned has many other connotations, which makes it less clear. It's not the first time he's convicted in court overall, but it's the first time for this charge.

Thank you. Past a certain level it's pretty hard for non native speakers to improve because you don't get tons of this kind of feedbacks.

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#357

Post by mrguyorama »

glenstein wrote: post #282
schmidtleonard wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's crazy to me is seeing this happen at an individual level. In 2022, my conservative family members were reluctantly but firmly on board with the idea that Trump did the crimes: lied to the tax man, stole the classified documents, leaned on the Georgia secretary of state to "find me 11780 votes," and on Jan 6 set up fake electors and asked Pence to overturn the election. In each case, they gave a good fight, but…

>and in 2025 they are gaslighting me about ever having had those arguments at all This part is especially fascinating because I have heard of, and even had, remarkably similar experiences. The only real thing is the perpetual now. It's not even that they aren't curious or aware of what they said previously, they even emphatically deny their own words. I don't know if you remember when Ebola was a big news topic becau…

They have lost all ability to remember the past.

Big head political pundits literally go on Fox News and blame a Democrat President for Epstein's death, and you have to tell them "Uh, no, Trump was president then, and it was his administration in control" and they have this insane double take look like they can't possibly remember that.

Blaming Obama for the Hurricane Katrina response wasn't a fluke.

My father is a general contractor and viscerally experienced Trump's first term stupidity tripling his material costs. He still voted for him again, as "good for the economy", or "the democrats have gone too far". He blames democrats for the regional grocery chain hiring gay people as managers, which is funny, because they hire those people because they are the right kind of MBA types. He literally can't recognize the problem when it's in his very face.

My father has never been outwardly sexist and always demonstrated respect for strong women and their ability to participate in normal society. He still was convinced by right wing media that he should be afraid of women in the cockpit.

The soybean farmers were fucked by Trump's first term, and he gave them over $10 billion dollars. They all voted for him again, and it happened the exact same way.

Like, at this point, how do you convince people who change their memory of reality to fit their ideology?

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#358

Post by IncreasePosts »

_ache_ wrote: post #51
catwell wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's way more complicated than this. First, this is mostly about things that happened before his election. The tribunal ruled he did not personally benefit, and he did not directly solicit money to finance his campaign either. However, some of his closest allies (who would become his ministers later) did the latter. The tribunal could not find any direct proof he was involved but ruled there were enough "converging i…

To be fair, the probability that the short explanation "He received money from Libya for his presidential campaign" is actually the truth is very high. There is no formal proofs, but as you say, (the judges deliberated that) there is enough "converging indications" to support the idea that the short explanation is true.

How would one differentiate Sarkozy being in the know, and one of Sarkozy's inner circle doing it and keeping him in the dark?

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#359

Post by FridayoLeary »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #349
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.

Check out the BBC. I think it's part an unofficial mouthpiece of the foreign office and the most outstanding example in the world of how to push an agenda subtly through a combination of selective reporting, misrepresentation, false equivalances (an area where the BBC leads the world), combined with a very high quality editorial and reporting staff. But that recipe has an almost inherent left leaning stance. Oh also it's a punching bag for everyone and politicians love to bully it into submission, because it is subject to some level of state control. It's funded by forcing everyone to pay for a TV license.

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#360

Post by [deleted] »

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…

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