Comment by tttp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tttp | Hacker News Reader

France had an unfortunate history of self censorship from the media and active control of the public media from the president(de Gaulle that controlled the only TV channel, Mitterand ordering illegal wiretapping of journalists)

The actual french President is a control freak. Sarkozy has strong relationship with most of the private media owners and is using it.

He has since the start of his mandate tried to control the internet eg.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/may/13/france...

He is (ab)using a common view in France that speech should be controlled and freedom of speech isn't absolute. For instance, it is illegal to make xenophobic or racists comments. La quandrature du net is doing a good job of exposing the latest of his attacks and, hopefully public pressure can shame him out of his willingness to control everything.

He likes the French motto of "Liberty, equality fraternity". If enough people see him trying to replace the first one by censorship, he might be less aggressively trying.

Fortunately, his approval rate is record low, part of this is likely due to his abuse of power and willingness to control everything. Unfortunately, the best opposant is currently accused of sexual abuse.

Then, another member of the G8 is Italy, with Berlusconi as the president....

Interesting countries, all in all.

Freedom of speech isn't a law of nature, and it wasn't handed down from God or whomever. In the United States it is provided by the Constitution. In Canada we have the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and hate speech is forbidden, for example, members of the Westboro Baptist Church are banned from Canada.

Actually, the US constitution does not provide any rights, it does assume that Freedom of Speech and other rights are inherently ours and it only limits the powers of the federal government.

Isn’t that a distinction without a difference?

Didn't mean to imply it was, but in the US, it seems to be more permissive (ie. no matter how stupid and outrageous, you can say it) than in France. That's a general attitude about what is "allowed" to be said in the public sphere (a bit of a generalisation, but mostly confirmed on my biased sample of people I know on both countries).

eg. when Chomsky said that Faurisson had the right to write whatever crap he wanted (ie. pro freedom of speech), it was widely understood in France as a support of Faurisson's theories (Haulocaust denial)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faurisson_affair

Which is rather ironic in a country where Voltaire is said to have written "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".

You forgot Canada with Harper's government which is actively trying to push legislation that would allow the government to spy on internet traffic.

So with Russia that's 4-8 G8 countries I'm pretty sure the other 4 are probably in league with this type of crap.

No way to win.

I don't think Russia needs approval from from G8 to control the internet traffic. I am not from Russia, but from one of the post soviet countries, so I can assure you things are run differently over here. Russia might seem to be one of the most democratic countries (among post soviet countries), but from the inside it is completely another story.

>actual

The word you're looking for is "current".

Let's have a little patience. We're getting rid of Sarkozy soon enough, but we need to find a suitable replacement. There's the rub.

> The word you're looking for is "current".

"Actual" is a synonym for "current".

Sure, it's a synonym, but usage dictates it's incorrect to say "actual President" when you mean "current President", whereas "actual situation" is okay. The original context the writer is most certainly French where actuel means current, however the usage generates a false cognate.

no it's not?

http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/actual

In french, it's actually (!) more common to say "actuel" than "courrant". So I'm guessing the OP speaks french as a native language...?

Albeit spending most of my time speaking/thinking English, I'd have to confirm that French is my mother tongue. Well, swiss French, but close enough ;)

And I meant to write about the current president indeed.

Small world! Swiss french here too. (grew up in Geneva)

I'm not a native English speaker (nor French), but other English dictionaries have "existing now or current" as one of the definitions for "actual":

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/actual?show=0&...

http://oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_gb0007040#m_en...

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/actual

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=actual&tbs=dfn:...

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/actual

http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/dictionary/Dictionary...

Speaking as a professional translator, let me encourage you to look beyond dictionary definitions - each definition in a dictionary means that the word in question can stand in a particular role. A true pair of synonyms would coincide in meaning in all situations. Dictionaries can be very dangerous tools indeed in unsure hands. I know I've injured myself with them repeatedly, as has every translator at some time or another.

"Actual" is a common mistranslation from French or German. As a rule of thumb, actuel/aktuell can almost always be translated as "current". "Actual" in English means something more like "true".

In the phrase "actual situation", "actual" does take on the Latin meaning of "existing now or current", but you can see that today's gloss of "true" also fits there: "true situation" works pretty well to describe the actual situation. Although come to think of it, "actual situation" sounds little odd to my ear (although that is a very dangerous metric, because everything can sound odd if you think too hard about it).

It's one of those instances where a synonym isn't actually (ha!) equivalent, and doesn't quite work the same way in the sentence. In this case, 'actual President' would contrast with some fake President running around, whereas 'current President' contrasts with the upcoming President.

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