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French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

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Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#491
post #406

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…

The fact that he is even going to jail, or that there was a trial at all, is amazing. In Canada, top-level corruption like this just gets covered up by RCMP (who are directly top-down controlled by PM) - many cases of this.

He has half a dozen court dates set for other stuff related to corruption/money/....

Assuming he's losing the appeal on this particular case, he will have been sentenced for scheming with a convicted murderer (Lockerbie amongst other things).

If convicted, that person will be guilty of criminal actions together with a foreign dictator and his terrorist in chief.

Not exactly stealing gums.

The case is of particular seriousness and he's a convicted person, repeat offender.

Would something as serious be put under the rug in other democracies? I'm not so sure. If Justin Trudeau is found accepting money from a bunch of Taliban involved in weapons trafficking, would the RCMP turn a blind eye?

(Why do I say "if convicted"? He appealed, so he is innocent until proven guilty. Why is he in jail? In large parts because his political party lobbied for this type of sentences. Leopards did eat his face)

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 T…

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. You kill a single mom and her children for fun , those people shouldn’t suffer consequences for that ?

No state can claim to have a 0% false conviction rate. Would accept inhumane treatment while imprisoned if other, more deserving, people received the same?

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#493
post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about Le Monde Diplomatique?

"It's complicated" I guess. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Monde_diplomatique offers a few first insights. Note how the page quickly emphasizes the redaction's independence. Yet, it might be reasonably true: as stated in the Wikipedia page, Le Monde Diplomatique is read mostly by educated people, who probably are 1/ less susceptible to/more aware of coarse manipulation 2/ much less numerous. That's to say, influenc…

I had the same experience as you with Le Monde diplomatique. The language used in some of the articles felt a lot like propaganda ( hyperbolic language, us vs them, anger/emotional language, basic facts being ignored etc ). I was very surprised since the paper had a good reputation , and gave up. Maybe ( hopefully) this has changed.

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we crying tears over Muammar Gaddafi here? The man was a butcher and NATO was completely justified in imposing a no fly zone and supporting the National Transition Council in Libya. There was a UN Security Council resolution authorizing it. Lots of things to criticize Sarkozy for but his support for the intervention is not one of them.

As a result the country entered dark ages with suffering unseen before. Of course Gaddafi was betrayed by the French. Just like France is betraying all of their former colonies.

Except that Libya never was a French colony I think.

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#495
post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Law is downstream from politics and therefore in a very real sense subservient to it. To apply the law to political figures can never be done in a clean or unambiguous way This is untrue anywhere that has the rule of law. (One can run a system where the law is secondary to politics. But it doesn't have the benefits of rule of law.) > To preserve the law for the common stock, we can't use law against political figur…

There is no such thing as the "rule of law." It is a political myth useful as an organizing principle for regime change or as a legitimizing myth for an established political class seeking stability, but that doesn't make Law sovereign. Political Will (in the form of those who control institutions) rules and makes the laws. The laws are "parchment barriers" if there is no political will with the force to impose laws.…

> no such thing as the "rule of law." It is a political myth useful as an organizing principle

Everything we’re discussing is made up. That’s what social constructs like law, politics and language are.

> up to the ruling class to police its own by using the legal code against low-level political figures and officials. The Chinese Communist Party operates this way

You’re inspired by Legalism. It rejects the rule of law. It stands in conflict to the institutions of a republic, specifically, of voting.

(Also, the Chinese would execute someone for doing what Sarkozy or Trump did. Eliciting foreign interference in a domestic political contest and challenging the outcome of one with open violence. Former Presidents have been treated roughly for worse.)

> the Senate's threatened political prosecution of Caesar is historically understood to have been a motivating factor in his "crossing the Rubicon"

The Senate didn’t threaten Caesar with prosecution until after he crossed. Cato, personally, was threatening him.

> a political coup executed using lawfare

Impeachment and conviction is lawfare according to you?

> Now it's completely discredited and no one will take it seriously ever again. That's the effect of abusing the law for political purposes

It’s been “discredited” before. The teeth are in removal from office, not impeachment per se. (That’s just American civic ineptitude.)

To the extent that we’re abusing the law, you’re correct. I’ve seen serious brainstorming on how a D President can use Trump’s precedents to act swiftly ahead of Congress and the courts, for example, to accomplish policy goals that are popular but have been difficult to do precisely legally. If the President is above the law, he doesn’t need to worry about that constraint anymore.

> If they hadn't threatened him with lawfare, would the Republic have survived a little longer? Perhaps.

It did. Caesar didn’t end the Republic. That was his son, Octavius.

The point is when the Republic’s laws stopped applying to Caesar, it was effectively dead. There is no point calling for votes in that context.

We have a large number of authoritarian fascists in America. (There are also authoritarian leftists. They have not been politically empowered like the right has been.) The historic solutions to those were through law and then violence. If the law doesn’t apply, that leaves only violence. That’s civil war.

We’re not there yet. But we do need to make a concerted effort to ensure these folks are politically incapacitated while a basic civic education campaign can be completed, since basic concepts like “rule of law” isn’t taught outside the elites.

You’re citing history, ancient and modern, inaccurately to push an edgy narrative. I don’t know if you’re trolling or have been unwittingly trolled.

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#496
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That is a very good question.

The short answer is you can't. But There is enough hints that he maybe implicated at least as much as his collaborators.

One for example, is a testimony of a "smuggler" that he deposited the dirty money 2 times to his collaborator and once directly to Sarkozy. Not enough, he could lie.

A write-up of a meeting preparing the coming of Sarkozy (in arabic) that suggests there is another important subject to the visit of Sarkozy in Lybia. In a way that coincides, we know that the discuss alone (Gaddafy, Sarkozy and Guéant without any diplomatic representative only translators). Not enough, maybe it was another secret subject.

That may explains the famous trip of Gaddafy in Paris. (10 of December 2007, which was an unexpected move regarding his implication in multiple "plane terrorist attacks" (DC10 UTA ( UTA 772),Pan Am Flight 103 (Lockerbie)) and the "greatness" of the trip which was in "great fanfare" very uncommon one. https://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=3984020 Maybe Sarkozy really trade welcoming trip for good contracts but nobody trusts that.

It can also explains the implication of Sarkozy in nato air strike on Lybia to help the rebels (that leads to Gaddafy death). Gaddafy may have ask for help to interfere the revolt, and Sarkozy couln't politicaly explains it so did the opposite. At that moment, Lybia official reported that he must get the money back and that he was financed by their money (one of the two who reported it is dead, the other one is in exile and it's more complicated because he first support Sarkozy to get extracted from Lybia as he was caught by the rebels). At that time, nobody trusted the Lybia representative as the regime was a terrorist state.

Sooo, you can't tell that he knows, but it does explains a lot.

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#497
post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that he is even going to jail, or that there was a trial at all, is amazing. In Canada, top-level corruption like this just gets covered up by RCMP (who are directly top-down controlled by PM) - many cases of this.

He has half a dozen court dates set for other stuff related to corruption/money/.... Assuming he's losing the appeal on this particular case, he will have been sentenced for scheming with a convicted murderer (Lockerbie amongst other things). If convicted, that person will be guilty of criminal actions together with a foreign dictator and his terrorist in chief. Not exactly stealing gums. The case is of particular se…

> If Justin Trudeau is found accepting money from a bunch of Taliban involved in weapons trafficking, would the RCMP turn a blind eye?

RCMP turned a blind eye to multiple corruption scandals involving bribery, fraud, embezzlement of public funds, etc. under Trudeau and his government, and helped cover them up. That is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to corruption within the RCMP - there is a long list of nefarious and straight up illegal shit they have done over the years.

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#498
post #346

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…

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 respect…

So how is the French populus reacting to Sarkozy being jailed?

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#499
post #415

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…

In the last years I've noticed a huge number of pro sarkozy videos with epic soundtracks and diverse appearances from the guy. He is clearly a good speaker, but also clearly incompetent and mostly a good actor. I also noticed how much they invited his son to talk about important topics when the guy is just... The son of sarkozy

Well is his kid a good speaker or a bore?

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#500
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He should not be in jail now. His case is going to appeal but the court decided to still jail him now "provisionally" (exécution provisoire), which sounds like a political play. Coincidentally, the same is happening to Le Pen with respect to the decision to ban her from elections... As for "delaying" the case, this is just the French court system for you. Everything takes years and years.

Why would he have a treatment of favor? Almost every person convicted in his situation has a an execution provisoire, there's no special treatment here. Same for lepen. Let's put things straight, both of them are criminals, giving them a treatment of favor would be insane. And to show how morally corrupted they are, both of them have been really loud about a no tolerance justice system. I guess that speaks for itself…

My understanding with Le Pen is that she used funds that were earmarked for he EU parliament staff to pay the salary of someone on her regular staff. I find it hard to believe that similar errors weren’t made by people the French establishment simply like more than her. Calling her a morally corrupt criminal for that is pretty obviously political, and if its political, it should be decided by a vote (which she would win)
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