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French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

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Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how somebody can speak of the West having "foundational human rights and democracy" non-ironically now a days. We are literally providing the weapons to carry out an actual genocide in Gaza. And 'democracy' doesn't elevate Trump vs Biden as the two most liked candidates in the country. It's just a system with intentionally massive barriers to entry played by political elites and the occasional outs…

Hamas decided to invade Israel, they knew that Israel couldn't and wouldn't let the single most deadly day for Jews since 1945 unanswered.

In the grand scheme of things, I don't really have any delusions with regard to with war. I am vehemently opposed to it, yet simultaneously think it's inevitable and will probably stay with us forever. When two sides have fundamental and irreconcilable differences, a physical altercation is likely. On the level of nations, this is war. And in war an unfortunate reality is that innocents will die.

But what Israel is doing isn't war and the innocents they're killing aren't unfortunate 'collateral damage.' They're primarily and purposefully killing civilians that had absolutely nothing to do with what aggrieves Israel, exactly the same as Nazi Germany was killing Jews who had absolutely nothing to do with their grievances. And they're doing this only thanks to American weapons and technology.

After all is said and done, Israel will claim victory, yet Hamas will likely be dramatically larger than ever, at least if there are any Gazans left, simply because each person whose brother, father, or child was killed by Israel is now going to hold a life-long death grudge against Israel, in the same way that Jews still seek out what few remaining Nazis there are, when they aren't getting standing ovations in the Canadian parliament at least (more of those 'foundational human rights' being displayed). And this is because genocide has nothing to do with war - it's something uniquely abhorrent.

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#512
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the crime was about using syria's then dictator muhammar kadafi's blood money for his first presidential campaign. So there is a very strong incentive to keep this as private as possible. And in effect he's not the only one to be trialed and judged.

s/Syria/Libya/

Oups I'm so sorry you're right.

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#513
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

s/Syria/Libya/

which really makes me skeptical of the whole thing

I apologize for my mistake it is lybia in fact and not syria.

If you want to read about it in english, mediapart (one of the leading investigative journal on that case) has translated many of its articles : https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/dossier/sarkozy-gadd...

I believe there is a complete recap somewhere but sadly can't find it

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's not communist, it's just "left-leaning", organized by L'Humanite, a communist newspaper (who calls itself so), known for amongst other things, for grieving the "great comrade Stalin"'s death on its front page dated 9th March 1953. :o) And sure, belonging to a communist-leaning syndicate which publicly takes political stances (one being to say "dont vote for Sarkozy") has strictly no influence on how you de…

Man, the communist party (and the communist ideology) in France is pretty much dead today. They’re not even that much to the left today. They have no power and their boss has no social credibility outside of its party (see “Fabien Roussel n’est pas un camarade” songs) Your claim that the judges are red is a popular right wing fantasy

I didn't talk about the communist party. But yes you are right, the PC is dead in France.

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#515
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

She didn't simply used EU money to pay her party staff, she was the head of a stealing EU money system while also saying that EU costs to much to France. Not only is she a morally corrupt criminal but also a corrupter. It was not a mistake she made, she was not alone and all convicted members of her party were fully aware they were committing a massive fraud.

Saying that is was an error and the trial was political, is plain disinformation.

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#517
post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The public pressure against “the IDF” (but really against Jewish people) came from Qatari sponsorship of US higher education. If you dislike AIPAC you should dislike Qatar much more, for their budget is much higher.

Qatar gave a great deal of money to Tulane University - if you want to call an insititution with a 40% Jewish student body anti-Semitic I don't know what to say to you.

Are you saying the donation wouldn’t have an effect?

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#518
post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually kind of worse. Because you get a mix of Dassault (the company)'s agenda (defense spending, pro-industry) and a push for the fairly conservative views of the Marcel Bloch/Dassault descendants themselves. To be fair, le Figaro was The French conservative newspaper long before the Dassault's ownership (like +100 years prior), so it's more a case of "Le Figaro has a more comfortable budget to push its views…

> Or maybe lately, Larry Ellison's take over of Paramount/CBS (but it feels more like he is buying a toy for his son). If it were just a toy for his son these things wouldn't have happened - Stephen Colbert canned - Bari Weiss hired to head the news division - $32 million settlement for an easily winnable lawsuit I've probably missed some. Ellison is a huge Trump supporter and is clearly reshaping CBS to at least go…

$32 million settlement for a lawsuit *they had already won*. They were supposedly “settling” with Trump so that he wouldn't refile it.

It was a straight-up bribe.

Re: French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

#519
post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The public pressure against “the IDF” (but really against Jewish people) came from Qatari sponsorship of US higher education. If you dislike AIPAC you should dislike Qatar much more, for their budget is much higher.

I made a deliberate effort to neutralize my statement as much as possible. We could argue on this issue, but what we can't disagree on is the fact that there's an issue (which is all that's relevant to the point I was trying to make).

Sure but the public pressure “against the IDF” was manufactured. That’s an important point and relevant to the current discussion.
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