Hacker News Reader

Comment by gotchange | Hacker News Reader

The French regime again showing its ugly authoritarian and statist face with these draconian bills. It wasn't enough for them to put environmentalists under house arrest and subject innocent people to humiliating mandatory reporting to different police stations 3 times a day or obligatory curfew for certain people or neighborhoods without any judicial oversight. [0]

I knew it from the beginning that they would abuse the State of Emergency decree and turn the lives of people esp minorities into a living hell.

[0]: https://wiki.laquadrature.net/%C3%89tat_urgence/Recensement# ((FR))

View on HN

I'm getting really afraid of these authoritarian opportunists. Seems much more likely to have an impact on my life than terrorist attacks at least...

I'm genuinely more afraid of the people who are afraid right now than I am of the people who they think I should be afraid of. The anti-Muslim rhetoric (e.g. yelling "All Muslims are terrorists" at town meetings) scares the hell out of me. How easily could that attitude be shifted towards any arbitrary group with just one or two tragic events?

On one hand, it's unquestionable that radical Islam is an aggressor that is funding and directing terror attacks.

On the other hand, Muslims are people too, and it is extremely unjust to punish all Muslims for the actions of a radical sect. I think that Europe is in danger of lurching rightward and tempting the return of ethno-religious cleansing. Fascism is not pretty, and the danger for Europeans is real.

it's unquestionable that radical Islam is an aggressor

Sure, but why stop there instead of going just a tiny bit deeper and identifying the money layer? You'll find it has a lot less to do with religion and a lot more to do with efforts by the House of Saud to maintain an increasingly dubious hold on worldly power. You'll also find a rat's nest of illiberal interests from nominally liberal countries with an interest in their survival. Thus, the broader desire to deflect attention from the very dark and concentrated heart of this to a much more diffuse and amorphous target like "radical islam".

Every time you're tempted to say "radical Islam" try saying "Saudi Arabia" instead. More often than not, you'll find you've hit on the more accurate term.

Yes, this is my perspective as well, but for ease of conversation I didn't mention it here-- people get very upset.

But take it a step further. Who funds Saudi Arabia, and why? Who backs radical Sunnis, and why? Who backs the radical Shia? Geopolitical problems have many causes and symptoms which can grow into entire pathologies in their own right when they get really out of control, as the West's idiotic power struggle with Russia in the Middle East has.

Who funds Saudi Arabia? Nobody "funds" Saudi Arabia. It's a sovereign nation with massive reserves of oil and independent wealth, not some Silicon Valley start up. To the extent that the money comes from somewhere, it comes from all of us, because we need to get to work and gas costs money.

The point is that the US has its own set of deeply vested interests in these markets, and they're more than willing to tolerate what the Saudis are doing to underwrite jihadi terrorism and the Wahhabi strain of Islam that animates it if the alternative involves seriously consideration of changes to the way the developed world produces and consumes the energy it depends on.

Make no mistake Iran is a dangerous state too and Shiite Islam can be weaponized too and could prove much more lethal than Sunni Islam given that religious Shiites usually follow their "Pope" or Supreme Leader blindly.

Just imagine an army of 500 mln or so that can be mobilized with a single fiery speech or declaration. Actually, that kind of empire or army is the wildest wet dream that Sunni radicals could have.

That's a hypothetical with a significant number of non-trivial barriers to realization, not an actual situation with a long a well-documented history. You've also missed the larger point, which has to do with the deeply cynical and reckless policies of Western elites with regard to the KSA.

Finally, your numbers are absurd. 500 million? Shia? In round numbers, you're off by...a lot. ~180 million is closer to the mark, and the idea that this entire population, very young and old included, is one speech away from becoming a ferocious army is beyond insane.

I'm sorry, but the way you combined deep ignorance and wild speculation with plain bad information was ugly enough. Finishing your remarks with a needless bit of vulgarity puts them way over the top.

Seriously, this is the kind of garbage you expect to find at Trump rallies, not HN.

you have reason to be concerned. see: japanese american internment. that actually happened.

> How easily could that attitude be shifted towards any arbitrary group with just one or two tragic events?

It will be much easier with more unchecked authoritarian law in place.

"Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear."

            -- Bertrand Russell

But if you think this is something, wait until Le Pen comes to power.

It's not just France either. Authoritarianism is rife in much of the rest of Europe, and the rest of the world, for that matter.

France is a particularly interesting case, however. As on the one hand they're the land of Voltaire, of the French Revolution, of the ideals of "liberté, égalité, fraternité", and on the other of authoritarianism, colonialism, and xenophobia.

Dont make me laugh. The revolutionaries were talking about fraternity while chopping heads by the 100 000s. Study your History my friend. France has always had an authoritarian face.

There was also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_massacre_of_1961

>The Paris massacre of 1961 was a massacre in Paris on 17 October 1961, during the Algerian War (1954–62). Under orders from the head of the Parisian police, Maurice Papon, the French National Police attacked a demonstration of some 30,000 pro-National Liberation Front (FLN) Algerians.

>After 37 years of denial, in 1998 the French government acknowledged 40 deaths, although there are estimates of over 200.

>Many demonstrators died when they were violently herded by police into the River Seine, with some thrown from bridges after being beaten unconscious. Other demonstrators were killed within the courtyard of the Paris police headquarters after being arrested and delivered there in police buses.

Here's hoping history doesn't repeat itself.

> Authoritarianism is rife in much of the rest of Europe, and the rest of the world, for that matter.

Europe's recent trend towards democracy was never really more than a trend. Democracy requires peace to flourish, without it people are going to value strongman leadership. Europe has only very recently shook off the threat of war. Nobody expects another great war, but it still takes a few hundred years before democratic institutions become robust enough to resist all the different ways the area can slide back into tyranny. Europe is not yet one polity, but they're moving in that direction.

Once people start thinking of themselves as European first, and French / German / Italian / etc. second, that's when you know Europe is really ready for democracy. It takes a while. It wasn't that long ago that United States citizens thought of themselves as citizens of their state first, then of the Union, the civil war cured us of that defect.

Perhaps Europe needs one more war to draw them together. Maybe a few of them. With luck those wars won't have to be martial in nature.

The police found more than 300 illegal weapons during their searches. People that were put under house arrests have a file on them because of their links with terrorists or terrorist organizations. I don't feel the government is abusing the state of emergency, I just feel they should have done all this before the attacks.

> terrorist organizations

Like those pesky ecologists that endanger the state by stopping economic growth and slowing down job creation at the cost of increased pollution, right?

They're not ecologists, they're anti-globalization anarchists that protested against a new airport by destroying shops in downtown Nantes. They recently threw at the police candles that people left at the memorial for the Paris attacks. I consider myself an ecologist but I have no sympathy for these people.

Can you read French? https://wiki.laquadrature.net/%C3%89tat_urgence/Recensement#...

People who commit crimes should be fined or arrested. These are preventive house arrests for crimes that they might commit in the future. You really don't see the problem with this?

They also banned alcohol sales at night in some places for the same simple reason: the police has better things to do right now than dealing with drunk people or anarchists

So much for "liberté"... which precisely seems to be what gotchange was talking about.

You didn't respond to the question.

They are known violent protestors. I don't care much about the freedom of "environmentalists" that protest against capitalism by burning down stores. Especially while the country is in state of emergency.

And yet, they're still not ISIS terrorists. The state of emergency was used to stop public discourse and dissent - both anarchists and non-anarchists were banned from attending marches during the Paris climate summit.

The police had to protect the COP21 and the visit from more than 150 head of states. They also have to protect administrations, newspaper offices, jewish organizations and others potential terrorist targets. There's just not enough police forces to handle all this, plus marches and anarchist protests

Not having proper resources isn't a reason to infringe upon the freedoms of the people. If the police can't handle their work, then they should just ignore less important crimes and focus their efforts on the stuff that matters. Otherwise the French government could use a lack of resources as an excuse to silence whoever they want. With a justification like that, they could make arrests for thought-crime.

Who's more of a threat to the public - random candle-throwing anarchists, or the heads of state of the biggest and most militarised and industrialised nations in the world?

Terrorists are terrorists regardless of affiliation. ISIS doesn't have organized operations in the west it just takes credit for lone acts.

By and large its not clear ISIS actually wants people to commit terror attacks in the west since it gets potentially useful recruits killed not fighting for territory in the middle East (note they are big on how you should definitely move to the ISIS territories).

anarchists =/= terrorists

A mere file? In the US, when a suspected terrorist is held by US state security and they are not a US citizen, every non-citizen in their social graph (family, friends, even known acquaintances) who aren't already being held are deported immediately.

I've never heard of this. Does this policy have a name I could read up on?

I learned about it reading a long article about the Boston Marathon Bombing in the New Yorker a couple of months after the incident occurred. It shocked me, but when the reporter asked the INS/ICE offices about it they said it was "standard procedure".

Hey people, I have a file on GrumpyBen, can someone please lock him up as he is deemed a threat to public safety?

Joking aside, if activists committed any crime, you follow the legal procedures and challenge them in a court of law before a judge and let the defendants present their case in a free trial and see if any of the charges you brought against them sticks, otherwise shut up and leave them alone because if you start allowing police to hand out sentences without legal recourse to challenge these arbitrary punishments, you'll descend slowly into a police state and horrific society to live within.

I don't find your "joke" very funny at all, in the aftermath of almost 200 terrorist deaths (in the west) in November alone. GrumpyBen's prescription is not fun and anti-liberty, but so is living in a society being preyed upon by violent groups within it.

I don't find your comment constructive at all.

First, it wasn't a joke. Second, we were discussing putting environment activists under arbitrary house arrest not terrorists or terrorism. Your anger at the tragic death should be directed at the terrorists or the security apparatus which failed miserably to protect people in the "west" and not at me or the activists.

Try next time to read the comments first before jumping into the discussion.

your silly faux-incitement "joking" (your words) strikes the wrong tone in this literally deadly-serious subject matter, and if it potentially offends sensibilities then I'm sorry, but pointing that out to you can be constructive.

I agree with you and that's actually the case here. If these activists think their house arrest is unfair, they can complain to an administrative judge that will look into their case.

No, it should be the other way around.

You have to get a verdict first in order to detain them and not let them do the job for you and make them go through hardships for a redress and emergency laws are not just or fair to entertain them .

This is temporary, the country is in "state of emergency", that gives the government and the police special powers to reestablish order. I think that was justified after the attacks but I would oppose it if the government wants to extend it past 3 months.

But the police is taking advantage and using these powers to detain people that otherwise they don't have the right to detain, such as env activists.

And this is the left in power. It's going to get worse when the right and the extreme right get their turn.

Isn't this absolutely terrifying? People being rounded up, house arrest, cities locked down, violence against immigrants. It's a very bad look, and it's especially hard to criticize the response in the wake of the attacks.

Rather than fight and complain piecemeal in response to government oversteps in their attempts to stop terror, dissenters need to formulate a concrete affirmative plan for dealing with terror while maintaining civil liberties and privacy. I'm not sure exactly what this plan would look like, but without something organized to push for, the government is going to keep getting their way and making everyone less free.

I think it has nothing to do with political side anymore. Just irrational reaction to fear from the public, and over-exploitation of that fear to gain more power from the government.

It's not pretty to watch.

[edit] Fear is irrational by definition, I'm not judging on that, and understand why people are afraid.

> I think it has nothing to do with political side anymore.

Really? I find this conclusion a little baffling, to be frank. Without saying which side of the political spectrum is more "correct", one can hardly deny that the right includes stronger reactions to perceived threats, practically by definition.

You can see it in the rhetoric, the policies, the constituents, etc of both parties. Even now, I would be surprised if policies like these were seeing equal amounts of dissent from the right and from the left (note that this is a different axis than liberal/conservative).

The mainstream left in France mainly the Socialists are as awful when it comes to individual liberties as their peers in the center right.

A good deal of French people love the nanny state and their government to meddle into their private business and run their lives but they have their differences on how to achieve that and which flavor to pick.

Sent from a computer made in China.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com