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Comment by expertentipp | Hacker News Reader

Just a friendly reminder: as of today there has been a state of emergency in France for over a year now. We are talking about situation with regular army with full automatic assault weapons on the streets and police authorized to enter apartments without court order.

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Yes. It was a temporary measure that as been prolonged more and more. It's rather concerning, but what's worst is that the population really doesn't see the problem with it. If anything goes in the direction away from freedom with a security label attached to it, everybody will follow happily. This is the receipe for a new dictatorship. But of course if you say that you are crazy because there is no way our country would do that ever. We are so clever. Better than the rest of the world. And history's lesson don't apply to us.

Had to work in England in the 90's for a week and the bus on the route I used was blown up two hours after I got off by the IRA. All the London landmarks were patrolled by army soldiers with rifles. Everyone can get used to almost any circumstance, the odds of being a victim of a terror attack are miniscule. I'm much more likely to get hit by a drunk driver in the USA.

I refuse to accept the "you are more likely to die in a road accident" argument. Simply refuse. Ironically the terrorist attack in Berlin last December was initially categorized as a road accident.

What does refusing to accept the argument mean in this case? The statistics are pretty clear, but presumably you aren't disputing that?

What's bad about that argument? It's just statistics.

How can you "refuse to accept" statistics though? You can "refuse to accept" that it's sunny outside all you want, doesn't stop the sun from shining.

Well if we accept that wikipedia has statistics correct, in the USA in 2006 about 18,000 people were killed as a result of drunk driving accidents. This compares to the approximate 3000 killed in the 2001 terrorists attacks, so we in the USA accept the number of victims of about one 9/11 attack every two months as a necessary risk of driving, if the cause is a drunk driver.

In the same article, the USA is noted as having a higher DUI rate than either the UK or Australia in spite of both those countries having a lower legal drinking age and higher consumption of alcohol.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunk_driving_in_the_United_St...

I'm Canadian and have a 15 month old, so I'm not as up on European news as I should be. Does that state of emergency stem from the Paris attacks in 2015?

Yes, that's right.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_of_emergency_in_France#...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2015_Paris_attacks#St...

It was supposed to be a temporary state but no politician wants to be responsible of an attack if they shut it off...

I don't live in Paris but overall this doesn't change daily life by much. You basically only see a couple police officers in front of police stations and a couple guards in front of universities.

Some would argue Hollande used this to allow France ignore the EU mandated deficit target, because the country is somehow "at war".

IMO it is unlikely, because France's state budget (always in huge deficit since 10 years) is already under scrutinity by EU commission, which means in practice that France has to implement in law whatever the EU commission "recommends".

http://ec.europa.eu/europe2020/making-it-happen/country-spec...

Meanwhile, others on hacker news preach about how free Europe is. Love it.

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