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French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

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Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#361

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…

> 90% of medias in France belongs to a few wealthy families that are friends with him.

That isn't a problem if the electorate aren't easily influenced.

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#362

Imagine, a land full of mother sauces, divine cuisine and pastries, and a corrupt and sentenced felon actually facing (eventual) justice for the crimes they committed. This sounds like a magical land (all is relative).

France sucks for living tbh. I have a family there and while it's nice to visit, I would never live there. Salaries are low, there are no many jobs even in Paris, rent is high, taxes are high, everything is expensive and less comfortable than in US or Canada.

I miss my suburban home after a week there, every time.

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#363

By the way, this is not possible in the U.S and in many other countries. When someone is convicted of a crime, they don’t usually start serving a prison sentence until the case is final. If they appeal, the sentence is automatically paused or can be stayed by the court. In practice, this means you don’t go to prison (unless you are already in preventive detention because of flight risk or danger) while your case is s…

What do you mean? You can get detained and held in jail without bail until sentencing if the court orders it.

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#364
post #90

[flagged]

I wonder what frech jail food is like.

I have been 15 months in French psychiatric jail. It tastes like *. It is basically plastic trays, very industrial microwaven at the last time, and you hope everyday that it will be your favorite meal, because they tend to rotate the food, and it tastes lik * all the time.

Also I Wanted to say that French jail is NO JOKE. You already hurt from inhumane solitary, or else you have a cell with a TV (there is indeed a TV) but to socialize with psychopatic and/or "exotic" people. They're not "kind", and they're not nice.

Even other exotic people had a rough time. It is filled with aggressivity, honor struggles, ect.. JAIL IS NO JOKE. On top of that, it spans a looooong time... You cannot realize how loooong it is to be in jail, it feels forever. People who never went to jail cannot realize that.

I am basically thinking nowadays that jail is torture and it should not be a thing. It is very torture... Let us militate for the end of that.

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#365

Imagine, a land full of mother sauces, divine cuisine and pastries, and a corrupt and sentenced felon actually facing (eventual) justice for the crimes they committed. This sounds like a magical land (all is relative).

France sucks for living tbh. I have a family there and while it's nice to visit, I would never live there. Salaries are low, there are no many jobs even in Paris, rent is high, taxes are high, everything is expensive and less comfortable than in US or Canada. I miss my suburban home after a week there, every time.

Worked in a 2nd-tier city in France for a while. And, yes, salaries are low in comparison but I found it a very livable place. The French just emphasize different things. Good quality restaurants are very affordable, I had 45 days of paid vacation, etc.

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Interesting that you conclude with left leaning, when, as I understand it, the BBC is considered to lean right by many, too. I recall a number of journalists remanding BBC leadership over their alleged pro-Israel and right wing bias.

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#367
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.

Or maybe just the new publicist is better than the old publicist?

Or maybe it's a simple change of strategy; the goal is now "rehabilitate image" rather than "prevent conviction" - and with the new strategy, a new team.

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#368

[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.

So the idea is this will rehabilitate Sarkozy? Do you believe that this experience will rehabilitate Sarkozy, or even that he's an active threat to commit more crimes in the future? It seems like the only conceivable social benefit of incarcerating him is to punish him for corruption as a deterrent to others. But his luxury prison room probably won't do that, so it's basically just an expensive legal formality to satisfy public demands for "justice" (ie, retribution for wrongdoing)

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Imagine a felon, convicted by a jury, claiming "the case was so weak it fell apart on its own".

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#370

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…

I think propaganda is only obvious when it involves topics you follow or now intimately.

This is untrue. What makes it seem true is that there are extremely bad or nonsensical arguments that some people will accept (often without examination) when they support their own predetermined (often by lifestyle) side, but they will be far more critical of any argument that supports the other side. They spot the bad arguments on the other side and call them out, but ignore the good ones because they cause stress.

The best way to notice this in yourself (I think) is if there are arguments for the other side of an issue that you simply avoid discussion of altogether. When they are brought up, you attack the source, personally attack the person repeating them, or refuse the discussion on some other terms. This is reflexively doing propaganda, on a small scale, but as a reaction to being cornered.

If you find yourself in this situation, resorting to repeating slogans you've heard rather than treating the argument exactly as you would treat an argument in an uncontroversial context, it's better to shut up, listen, and reflect.

The only moral position is to be a collection of any valid argument you can find, always trying to clarify their degree of soundness. Whenever you deviate from that, you're defying reason, and weakening civil society (which relies on secular protocols.)

If you consume propaganda with that mindset, you notice because it has very little useful content at all. It's astounding how long media can go on about a subject without saying anything, or making any coherent claim, and scary when you see people who seem to get something out of that avalanche and they can't quite explain how they got there. It's how Saddam did 9/11.

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