There's a lot to fix in France, and a lot of things going well.
Looking at economic trends, it does seem like optimizing for quality of life of the boomer generation at the cost of the future generations, which is not so nice.
Without major cuts to its welfare state (which is Europe's most massive one as a percentage of GDP), France's finances are unsustainable. The necessary tax revenue just isn't there and you cannot borrow indefinitely to spend on entitlements.
As of current trends, if something explodes the Eurozone, it will be endless accumulation of French sovereign debt. It is the same as once Greece was, but ten times as big.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_heads_of_state_and_gov...
Norman Saunders: Saunders was alleged by the US Drug Enforcement Administration to have accepted $30,000 from undercover agents to ensure safe passage of drugs by permitting safe stopover refuelling of drug flights from Colombia to the United States. Video evidence showed Saunders accepting $20,000 from an agent. Saunders was convicted in July 1985 of conspiracy, though he was acquitted of the charge of conspiring to import drugs into the United States. He was sentenced to eight years in prison and fined $50,000.
Then he went on to get re-elected. And then had an airport named in his honour. Nuts.
The Elite all don't get along with each other, but in a "civilized" world where there is enough loot to share with everyone, they don't need to directly attack each other. Unless something really threatens and freaks them out.
But once in a while they authorize their foot soldiers in the military, judiciary, legislatures, media to attack each other. Which is all just a side show - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circulation_of_elites
- Prosecuting white-collar crime still takes ages and takes over a decade, long after the resulting sentences have a real impact
- People like Nicolas Sarkozy have powerful media relays (most of the TV/newspaper owners in France are friends of him or at least sympathetic) and they can smear the judgment, smear the judges in the media with impunity
- His allies are currently in power, he was invited for a short discussion by president Macron and got a visit in prison from the minister of justice Darmanin, which reeks of favoritism
So the road ahead is still long, and I'm not even talking about current political climate which is horrendous.
I would say that when it comes to political dysfunction, France is a fairly bad case. The Gaullist semipresidential system was a mistake. IIRC only Erdogan copied it.
He delayed the case enough (almost 13 years) so that he's now more than 70 though and I doubt he stays to long in prison because of his age.
But it's nice to see that he couldn't run away from justice forever and is finally in jail.
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.
The "exécution provisoire" is a measure that was introduced when his own party was in power, to make sure that terrorists were jailed immediately. He happened to be condemned for breaching the same law (association de malfaiteurs) that is used against terrorists.
I once read a comment by a lawyer that he was amazed by the number of politicians who ended up being caught by laws they had voted for. This is what happened here.
In fact when he was president he implemented another law, on minimum mandatory sanctions for repeated offenders (peines plancher) which was repelled by the subsequent administration. He would have been caught by that too otherwise.
I cannot be sure of what is happening (hence "seems") but neither can you, especially regarding decisions that are discretionary.
At least here there is a guilty verdict even if not final. In France people can be jailed for years without a trial...
Sure, but also, he did the crime. There can not really be any doubt for the people who followed the trial, and the judges have shown extreme caution, rejecting charges when there was the slightest doubt.
The political opinion or lack thereof of judges is irrelevant.
At one point when you're this corrupt, putting you away is the only solution.
He should definitely be in jail, as some of the things he's been charged with, and also in other cases sentenced for, were conspiracies to rig his trials and attempts to lean on witnesses, in cases including, but not limited to, this very trial [1]. Him being behind bars is necessary to stop his attempts to rig his own trial.
No. That’s how it’s done, and he can thank himself because he introduced the process himself. It’s utterly disgusting to hear him bloviating about criminals in 2007 and now whining because he’s on the receiving end. Shameless.
The law is the law. He’s been convicted enough and he belongs in jail.
Is there a country for which that doesn't hold true?
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.
The general difference is that "convicted" is neutral in tone. "Condemned" includes a particular tone, and religious and moral connotations, which might be unfitting in some cases.
Edit: Take the above with some grain of salt, might be at least incomplete, maybe somewhat wrong. After consulting the internet, I've found out that there are even more meanings and nuances, which I didn't know about. Sorry for being an arrogant non-native-speaker trying to score internet points ;)
On the other hand, condemned is specifically about being sentenced to death -or sometimes life in prison or some similarly hard punishment-. Which is also why a building is said to be condemned when it is set to be demolished.
We don't ever use "sentence" in a legal context (it still exists but is old fashioned), things diverged quite a bit it seems between those languages.
Out of that context, it's usually condenado the one used.
We just still have a working judiciary system. But for how long? It barely correctly financed and his independence his attacked every days in the oligarchy controlled medias.
I hope you fix your judiciary system one day.
Fortunately he failed to do it when he was in power, and this is in my opinion a big factor in his current demise.
The documentary The Bibi Files was a particularly interesting examination of the allegations against him and his almost shrugging response to them [0]. And going back to America, a week ago Trump asked the Israeli president to preemptively pardon Netanyahu during his speech at their parliament [1], which I find to be concerning on all possible levels.
[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33338697/
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/trump-urges-israel...
No offense but the french people should thank god their criminal in control didn't go all the way through turning the country into a shit show in the process.
As I said before I believe we live in a global time in which countries must embrace the rule of law systematically in order to survive as democracies. Otherwise you just get a kleptocracy with extra steps, just like in the US, some of Europe and Russia.
How about it if by a fuller acceptance that power corrupts, we have the head of government only serve for one term and automatically be taken to (actual) prison once their time is done. They would then have an expedited trial by a socioeconomically diverse jury representing the population, judge their overreach in different areas, and how long of a sentence they should be given; at best, they would be released after a month or two for time served. Afterwards, unless this has been explicitly revoked from them due to gross misconduct, the former head of government would be given a sufficiently generous stipend to live and travel without ever needing to work again, and encouraged to spend the rest of their lives on charitable pursuits.
The big risk I see here is that by stripping some of the long-term power from the head of government, it would lead to a re-concentration of powers in a head of party role, or other behind-the-scenes power brokers, but the intent here is that the head of government once elected is explicitly given the ability to overreach, and particularly knowing that they'll be set for life, they'll have the freedom to act independently, in what hopefully would be their take on the country's best interests, and a desire to leave a positive legacy. And furthermore, I think that restricting the ascension to power to those who are willing to take on that prison time would attract people who are a bit less vain than the typical crop of candidates, and at the same time reduce the stigma of prison in general, and hopefully lead to political interest in improving prison conditions.
Putting an active president in jail was not something the country wanted to risk, I'm not convinced prior Supreme Courts would have agreed to that either in other situations. If Trump did not win the election he would have faced serious consequences, beyond the millions of dollars he already owes from other trials.
Sarkozy is easier to put in jail because he's not in power.
Here's a weird observation. I know the names of several US supreme court judges, and their right/left lean, despite never having lived there. I've lived in four other countries, and I might know one judge due to him having a funny name.
What also doesn't tend to happen in Europe is questioning the legitimacy of the system. People can get sentenced and they just... accept it.
He is jailed in a jail nicknamed "La Santé", which is also the the french cheers sentence. "À la votre *et la santé".
Will be the running gag of this christmas and new year.
But got covered by Wikipédia "https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_de_la_Sant%C3%A9", so I did called it a nickname too.
I'm pretty sure it can be called a "Métonymie de lieu" but I just didn't want to insist about that, it feels a little pedantic.
Typical French conversation then!
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_financing_in_the_2007_F...
First, this is mostly about things that happened before his election.
The tribunal ruled he did not personally benefit, and he did not directly solicit money to finance his campaign either.
However, some of his closest allies (who would become his ministers later) did the latter. The tribunal could not find any direct proof he was involved but ruled there were enough "converging indications" that he knew and did nothing to stop it.
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.
Sarkozy and all of his billionaire media allies are already trying their hardest to undermine the credibility of the justice system at every turn with extremely dangerous rhetoric; I dread to imagine what this would have been like had they gone with ever-so-slightly-less-safe charges
The tribunal didn't rule he didn't personally benefit. It ruled that he conspired to corrupt the leaders of Lybia to steal money from the Lybian people and fund his electoral campaign. In my book becoming president of France is certainly a "personal benefit". There are numerous factual evidence, documents from Lybia, fund transfers, secret meetings of his closest friends with Abdullah Senussi, who has been convicted to life in prison in France for orchestrating the bombing of UTA flight 772 which resulted in 170 deaths and is also currently investigated for another plane bombing.
The money he got allowed him to spend about twice the allowed amount on his campaign, giving him an unfair advantage in the election. In other words he dealt with terrorists to potentially steal the presidential election. What Sarkozy did is extremely severe, I'd call that high treason. He got far less that he deserved.
Also it's worth mentioning that it is his third conviction. He already got a 2 years and 1 year sentence which were confirmed in appeal in other cases.
the money didn't go in his pocket, but he benefited from it by being elected president (partly thanks to this illegal funding), which to this day gives him a life of money and various privileges.
The brother in law personally orchestrated the crashe of a civilian airliner, killing 170 passengers
There's been bags of cash that transited by private airplanes, terrorist acts in reprisal, and ultimately a probable demise of Gaddafi's regime in response.
Some real dirty actions with lots of lives lost.
Formal proofs of this illegal financing have been linked to two of his closest collaborators but not him directly. He is so convicted for "association de malfaiteurs" wich mean "partnership with criminals / wrongdoers".
The illegal financing also explains what the US call the "Sarkozy war", which what a very odd move from France.
Note that, despite the formal proofs of the wrong doing, Sarkozy has the support of most major medias AND from the current president Macron which is not exactly the same party as Sarkozy (but close enough). That suggests politically motivated prosecution is very unlikely.
Even if indeed guilty, things like jailing him "provisionally" despite his appeal are discretionary decisions of the court so also open to all interpretations despite the very black and white comments here...
It really is not. Nobody is benefitting from this politically, and the facts are difficult to ignore.
> jailing him "provisionally" despite his appeal are discretionary decisions of the court so also open to all interpretations depiste the very black and white comments her
It’s just how it’s done in cases like this, and he can thank himself for having normalised it.
I read it the other way around. You're arguing for preferencial treatment on the ground that any inconvenience could be misconstrued as politically motivated.
In the meantime you're seeing a case involving organized crime, lieutenants caught red-handed, and charges extended to the leader of the criminal enterprise. You're not seeing any doubt being raised on the charges, only on whether the politician could have political opponents.
But now he is also the subject of his own policies and it does not like that. Looks like justice is ok just when it is not affecting him personally.
His attitude is totally disgusting and indecent.
Speaking as someone who isn't french,
If Sarkozy received the same funding from Obama it would have beem extremely shady.
From Gaddafi it sounds outright treacherous.
But it is also clear that judges (who are notable left-leaning, if not far-left) are much more efficient at prosecuting right-wing figures (Fillon, for 0 reason this time).
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 deliver sentencing, nor does the famous incident "mur des cons" in 2013.
This blend of comments strike me as odd. Are you actually complaining that a judicial system is too efficient at catching corruption at high levels? Is this bad? What point are you trying to make, exactly?
It is unfortunately way less efficient at jailing or expelling multi-reoffenders, who have entered the country illegally, then broken the law multiple times, been in front of judges 30, 40, sometimes 100 times, been officially notified that they have to leave France ("OQTF"), yet, are still free to roam around until they're 101st crime ends up in the news and everyone asks "how come the non-politicized judges let them out 100 times before?"
The current sentence is for the illegal financing of his presidential campaign to the tune of 50 million euro, which is well above the legal cost cap. Although the amounts are benign compared to the amount of bribery seen in the US presidential runs, it is still unfair democratically and should be punished harshly accordingly. Interestingly, this case isn't motivated by financial greed, as in bribery for his own financial interests, but by power, i.e., help win the presidential election.
It should be noted that most of the bigger parties are known to have "alternative" accounting tricks so you can be certain that they also don't fully respect the funding cap, but they probably get away with differences (that we know of/suspect) of a few (tens of?) percent.
Sarkozy was not only well, well above that, with order O(200%), it was also done with money coming from a known dictator: Gaddafi. This brings a lot of interesting additional ethical questions to the table. Such as: what was the quid pro quo expected from such a payment? Or: what role did it play in Sarkozy ordering the bombing of Libya?
It could also be considered politically motivated in the sense that the judges themselves are not a-political (and it's fully in their rights to have a political opinion) and that some of the high-profile cases in the past have been handled by judges of a different political leaning. And without putting the impartiality of the justice system into doubt, some questions have been raised when some of the judges were a bit too vocal in the criticism of their political opponents.
And in parallel, although the judiciary system in France theoretically acts independently from the executive branch, the zones of influence are a bit murky and there are some indirect ways through which some pressure can be exerted onto the judges to facilitate, or in other cases slow down some cases.
So you could be certain that such a high-profile case was not done without the go-ahead of the executive. In that sense, it can be considered politically motivated.
Which doesn't mean Sarkozy shouldn't go to prison. He absolutely should. But please also clean-up all the other crooks, and go strongly after those that enriched themselves at the cost of the country. There are plenty of them, with lots of low-hanging fruit.
Not really. It is more complex than that.
There is two systems within the system for the "penal" (judiciary) in France:
- Le parquet, with a "procureur" who indirectly under the influence of the executive power.
- The "Juge d'Instruction". They are independent judges called only for complex affairs that are in charge of proof gathering and with more or less free hands.
Sarkozy affairs landed in the second system.
Politicans tend to hate the second systems for obvious reasons.
It is worth to notice that Sarkozy himself tried to reform the system and remove the "Juge d'instruction" entirely but ultimately failed.
[1] (French Wikipedia article about the affair) https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affaire_du_%C2%AB_Mur_des_cons...
A very interesting documentary [2] explains all this. There's also Netflix series that I didn't watch though.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Tapie
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_football_bribery_scanda...
[2] https://lcp.fr/programmes/les-mille-et-une-vies-de-bernard-t...
This person humiliated our country, and we're glad our justice put him behind bars
Karine Le Marchand expressing her support is one thing, identifiyng herself as being part of the same caste as Sarkozy, but seeing the same support from regular folks, who have most certainly been screwed over by the ex-President...
The Count of Monte Cristo is a good choice.
It’s just a not so subtle way to claim he’s innocent and that he’ll get his revenge.
So there's something there for everyone I guess.
"Why?"
"It saves time."
This is by design and not an unintended consequence.
Justice in this country is only served thanks to the incredible determination of the members of the judiciary.
Yea.. poor people call it a hotel room.
One can only dream about such a judicial system that puts criminals behind the bars even if they are very very VIP. Rule of law is what makes the difference between real democracies and AliExpress ones.
I'll take the time to recommend everybody go see the Northern Lights one time in their lives. Not only are they beautiful, the brain has a hard time contemplating something so huge and far away that the eyes discern no parallax. But unlike the moon and stars, they move!
I mean, jail should be a punishment, right?
In fact, I don't even think you could make British food as bad as that food was.
That's unfortunately not universally true. This is most obvious when considering the death penalty.
Norway exemplifies a rehabilitative justice model and it is effective, evidenced by low recidivism rates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_by_country#...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...
"First-world" is Cold War terminology meaning Western countries and their allies, as opposed to second-world Warsaw Pact states and their allies, versus third-world non-aligned states. This would include death penalty states like Pakistan and Iran, who at one point were British dominions.
If we instead mean "developed countries" (as defined by the IMF), then 4 out of 60 developed countries have not abolished the death penalty: they are the United States, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan.
The other 49 states continuing to use the death penalty (including China) are not considered "developed countries" by the IMF.
Then who is tasked with delivering justice to the victims?
How is that helpful?
(Whether a death sentence is good for society in general is a different question)
I guess there are some edge cases. Drug smugglers for example are probably aware of the rough probability of detection and weigh it up against the length of jail time. But I reckon Sarkozy thought he'd just get away with it and didn't even consider what the potential punishment would be.
It's worth considering then that the next person who has the option to do this might behave differently, given Sarkozy has not got away with it.
To use the example from a sibling comment, if a person kills a child and the father kills this guy out of vengeance .. it will do those children good, who can now live in safety afterwards from that person.
But if in reality the murderer also had family who did not believe he murdered anyone in the first place now set out to seek justice/vengeance, then yes, it becomes a war .. which is why we have courts and police nowdays, but what justice is, is still rather arbitarily defined. Concretely it means enforcing the law. And laws are written by people.
Justice as prevention is secondary - and arguably ineffective - or we'd have no crime, no recidivism, no addicts, nobody acting with obviously negative personal outcomes.
Two wings, two different moods, one prison.
Unfortunately, the trend for more rule based order has reversed. European governments are all struggling when the "who cares about rules" governments are full steam ahead. Even if they have net negative approval, they have plenty of fanatical supporters, they hold full narrative control through the media which is owned by their super rich allies. Oh and by the way this is happening because the "rule based world" folks screwed up and weren't fair either.
It's going to be worse before it gets better. The west is going through a phase and all I hope is that would be too destructive. Thankfully, the world isn't made just from "the west", so I guess its not the end for the humanity - yet.
"Humanity" as in "the species homo sapiens sapiens", yes, that will survive.
But "humanity" as in "societies ruled by foundational human rights and democracy"? Not if Trump's USA, China, Russia and Modi's India have their will.
Personally I don't have problem with that, my stuck is with the decay of the west. I like the European way of life, makes me sad to think that it might be coming to an end and that the rest of my life I will have to care deeply about the implications of geopolitics and power instead of more important things higher in the Maslow pyramid.
The past ~10 years have been a serious masks off moment. I long for who we were in the past, but I sometimes wonder if we ever were that, or if it was just a more well maintained facade. But this current nonsense? Yeah, I'm not particularly upset about giving another bloc having their time in the limelight, because at this point somebody calling what we've become to be grounded on 'foundational human rights and democracy' is plainly nauseating.
85% of prison sentences of more than two years also carry “exécution provisoire”: https://www.justice.gouv.fr/sites/default/files/migrations/p... (page 2). Sentences of more than 2 years are not the norm though.
> He will most likely ask the courts to review the execution of the sentence until the appeal in the next few days.
He already did.
The tribunal acknowledged no direct evidence linked Sarkozy to receiving or handling the funds and that the disputed flows weren't established as having served his campaign. Yet the conviction rested on a "bundle of concordant indices" rather than established facts.
The irony: Sarkozy spent his political career advocating for tougher criminal laws and harsher punishments. The "association de malfaiteurs" law was reintroduced in 1986, and he championed its application throughout his tenure. Now he's imprisoned under the very provision he helped expand—convicted on evidence of intent to prepare a crime rather than proof of an actual crime, exactly the kind of broad prosecutorial power he once argued was necessary.
He got bitten by his own sword.
Owner of Milan FC and involved in constructing large parts of Milan city. Multiple people in his parties were condemned for corruption, the co-founder of his main party “Forza Italia” called Marcello Dell’Utri went in jail for concussion with Mafia. Berlusconi had a mafia boss - Vittorio Mangano - living permanently in his mansion near Milan. Owner of large construction companies, movie companies, a large bank, publishing companies, multiple newspapers, a lot of investments and three of the main TVs in Italy, and never went in jail a single day. He was able to create laws ad personam, like that the tree most important political positions in the country got immunity from law persecution, and he also was able to shorten the limitation period for crimes, in order to avoid charges.
He got sentenced or prosecuted for: fiscal fraud for his Mediaset TVs, underage prostitution, prostitution racket (some of the girls were appearing in TVs and got elected as politicians to get $$$ government pensions), mafia murders ‘92/93 (where Falcone e Borsellino died, the two judges that brought to international attention the danger of Italian Mafia), multiple accounting frauds, criminal appropriations, and corruption. He had few personal lawyers which the main one of them, Niccolò Ghedini, got elected in parliament.
When I read about Sarkozy or Trump, I think they’re just bad clones of Berlusconi. They read his manual. Congratulations to France to take politics and corruption more seriously then Italians.
P.S. Berlusconi was best friend with Putin and Gheddafi.
It seems that when you cross a certain invisible threshold "justice" applies just a bit differently. Same in Argentina with corrupt and ex-robber Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.
In Argentina the lives of people of an entire country have been ruined because of the last 20 years of robbery from the state arcs.
Yet every disgusting politician is out there or has served a laughable sentence. And what do you get in turn after ripping off a country? A home prision benefit.
https://www.tf1info.fr/justice-faits-divers/nicolas-sarkozy-...
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 was rigged, that he was a great men that served France and so should not be treated like everyone else. Article about how sad the poor family is. Number of articles repeating friends of him verbatim s that the judgement was fake.
Almost none speaking about the facts, the grounds for his sentence, the big number of other trials against him that are running. And also the other definitive convictions he got. Like for attempting to bribe a head prosecutor to get insider info about his case. Using a prepaid line opened with a fake name...
But what you see in the end is that 90% of medias in France belongs to a few wealthy families that are friends with him.
I don't disagree with him going to jail: but it's one heck of a corrupt country where they all have their hands in the cookie jar.
Most french politicians who served at the EU, for example, have friends and family as "employees" on their payroll (well, on the EU citizens' payroll). Same at non-EU level: it's called "emplois fictifs" in french ("fictional jobs"). Soooo many stories about politicians at so many local, regional, national and supra-national levels engaging in "emplois fictifs".
So many mayors in France have dirty money on their hands. Where for example they block construction permits then, once joyfully greased with cash, allow the construction permits.
But Sarkozy was right-wing and the EU, and France in particular, is ultra left-wing. So it's good to put a right-wing president in jail.
Once again: I've got nothing against him going to jail. But we're talking about a country were judges are openly leftists. They're not impartial.
It's all rotten and disgusting.
And why do you think all the leftist french mainstream media root for right-wing Sarkozy? Because these media are at the hand of corrupt politicians who think a politician going to jail is a dangerous precedent. They're nearly all corrupt, so they're shitting their pants to see that even a president is sent to jail.
But yup: one politician in jail. Great. Only 9999 more to go. And corrupt judges.
Which are the "leftist french mainstream media" rooting for Sarkozy ?
The "leftist french mainstream media" I can think of would be Libération, Le Monde, Le Nouvel Obs, France Inter...
Do you have a link to articles where any of those are "defending" Sarkozy, cause quite frankly I missed it.
There is a reason why administrations don't go after obvious, in-your-face crimes committed by previous administrations/politicians. They all hate each other, but they are also terrified that if they prosecute previous administrations (for legitimate crimes), they'll be the target when someone else is in power (even if they themselves didn't commit any crimes).
I suppose it might be easier to prevent misbehavior by highest officials of the land by having stricter scrutiny, laws etc than prosecuting them after the fact, but who watches the watchdogs? Who watches the judiciary? As an ordinary citizen, it is exhausting to just even follow the news.
And if it is this bad in democracies, imagine how it is like in countries like Russia.
Does that still even exist? The problem I see in politics is that everyone has their hand in the cookie jar to some degree.
You don't get into politics unless you already have your hand in there, or are given the option to prove yourself where moving up the ranks involves helping someone getting their hand in there, with the unspoken assumption that they'll return the favor. And of course once you're in and have your hand in there, why rock the boat and waste all that effort?
I don't know. I suppose there is behavior that is illegal and behavior that is unethical. I guess there aren't that many politicians that are ethical, but there may be some (hopefully?) who don't do downright illegal things? Maybe, I dunno.
The fact that collectively we all have such low expectations and such low opinions about our politicians/government says a lot about the sorry state of affairs :(
Lots of bureaucrats everywhere.
Sorry, why is this such a big deal?
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 critical when that topic becomes mainstream, then reverts again to exploring the positives when the topic falls out of favor.
You see it even with people like Elizabeth Holmes. News stories about her fraud were everywhere until she had to go to jail, but now the news has swung to humanizing her, claiming her sentencing was excessive, focusing on the angle of a mother separated from her children, and confusingly ignoring her fraud at all.
It’s all designed to be counter-narrative and rise waves of controversy. The more controversial, the more shares and views.
The fact that a new publicist was hired by her before all the sympathetic press started coming out is enough for me to believe that there's a link there and not a natural news swing cycle.
https://www.theverge.com/news/611549/elizabeth-holmes-people...
Enslaving our media to what triggers the cravings of the masses was probably one of the dumbest thing we did. And we owe it, like many other terrible things, to ad industry.
It's a parasite of the economy and cancer of society. Serves no useful purpose beyond what an open access database of all products and services could cheaply fulfill.
Much like a brushless motor controller, if you pull towards the direction the rotors already faces, it's uninteresting. But if you lead the momentum in a different direction...
By 2024 they were 100% in lock-step with the party line that all cases were fake news lawfare (but wouldn't engage with detailed argument, of course) and in 2025 they are gaslighting me about ever having had those arguments at all. The only thing keeping me sane is the correspondence that I kept proving that our conversations weren't a product of my own fevered imagination.
> President Trump demanded that I use my authority as vice president presiding over the count of the Electoral College to essentially overturn the election by returning or literally rejecting votes.
A nitpick of mine is how Trump having the documents wasn’t the case against him. The case against Trump was an obstruction case because he lied and concealed the documents from authorities, going so far as shuffling them between properties, having his lawyers give false statements, and defying subpoenas.
This differentiates Trumps document case from everyone else’s (ie Bidens); the right loves to use this as an example of DOJ weaponization when they couldn’t be more different.
This part is especially fascinating because I have heard of, and even had, remarkably similar experiences. The only real thing is the perpetual now. It's not even that they aren't curious or aware of what they said previously, they even emphatically deny their own words.
I don't know if you remember when Ebola was a big news topic because there were two or three cases in the U.S., but I had a family member insisting it was "just the beginning" and was going to get worse. A year later he said there's "probably a lot of stuff happening that's not reported yet". Two years later he forgot he ever said it.
Tribal alignment. If the tribe had moved on from Trump and he had lost the election, your relatives would still be grounded in these conversations and reality.
Trump is still the leader of their party and cultural movement, They have zero incentive to acknowledge the truth if it conflicts with these loyalties. If anything, such an action would be dangerous and risk their standing within their tribe, So the loyalty test then becomes denying what's clear and obvious to prove you are still a loyal member.
That these same candidates, when elected, haven’t even attempted such a thing, even when they have an aligned Congress, doesn’t seem to register at all. They hear their lying talking heads say it again the next time, and believe it whole-heartedly. It’s so weird. You’d think at some point they’d start to wonder why it never happened.
It’s also a very dangerous precedent to bring criminal charges against the presumptive (and in hindsight, actual) winner of the at time forthcoming presidential election, even if some of the cases have merit. Regardless of the merit of the cases, it’s impossible for that scenario to not be at least partly politically motivated and to have the effect of trying to disenfranchise half the country.
No, if Joe Biden had the same facts against him the entire right wing -- including you -- would be eagerly prosecuting them and singing of the high-minded justice in doing so. Have you forgotten "lock her up!"?
"President is above the law" is a far more dangerous precedent to set, and "nominees are above the law" is out-of-this-word nuts.
Clearly, all the right-wing papers that have traditionnaly supported him (Le Figaro, Match) and all the hard-right-wing papers (owned by Bolloré, Arnault, etc..) that have _personnal_ ties to him are playing their "opinion" part.
I don't think public media is defending him at all. Left or Center-left papers are not (obviously.)
The tie breaker would be: "what is TF1 20h saying" (this is, no matter what new media says, still the one thing that most people watch and treat as "the news") - and I don't think they have been "blatantly" defending him.
1. They are the voice of a group of millions of people, and therefore a perception will exist that an attack on the politician is an attack on those people as well 2. Sure seems like a lot of them are compromised in some way, so any time one is targeted it will always seem selective in the moment
I don't know how much that intersects with what you're observing, and I don't really have easy answers.
For example: https://www.mediapart.fr/en/journal/international/110123/nic... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/15/france-investi...
Was there ever a time or place where this was not true?
In Hungary and Poland, they are specific, time-bound events with important institutional implications and unique factual circumstances. "It's always been that way" is risky because it can be used to airbrush away specific moral urgency with vagueness and false equivalences, and even functions to apologize for active advancements of authoritarianism as they are happening in real time.
Not sure how much an impact what you describe is having.
I see non optional and IMO skewed reporting all the time, I'm not sure it is all directed by someone.
If we follow the French justice, in my country (Greece) about 10% of people including almost all the politicians of the last decades should be in jail.
And then there are the many other trials involving Sarkozy and those around him...
rapsey•8h ago
adev_•8h ago
Additionally budget for political campaigns are strictly regulated in France. And getting bribes from foreign dictator is, of course, not allowed.
The reason he did not get condemned also for that is that the judge could not proove the usage of the money.
timeon•6h ago
Couldn't he setup some crypto fund instead? Or investment in ballroom? Or simply just receive present, let say plane, instead of money? Would that help him in this case?
vkou•6h ago
In a banana republic, the optics don't really matter in these kinds of situations.
adev_•2h ago
An other French politician, Francois Fillon, tried that with bribes as gift including some luxury Suits. In addition of some public money redirection to his own family.
And it did not play well for him either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fillon_affair
Ironically, he was Sarkozy's Prime Minster.
The party that they both come from (The republicans, previously UMP, previously RPR) has a long history of financial abuses and associated judgements.
The only "new" thing here is that it explicitly condemned a previous President.
moralestapia•8h ago
The solitary confinement part is quite harsh, I've never understood how that is supposed to rehabilitate someone.
In France there's early release, parole, etc. so real time he spends behind bars might be as low as two years.
Edit: The WP article is actually a very interesting read, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_financing_in_the_2007_F...
seszett•7h ago
In this case it's for his own wellbeing, because it's probably difficult for a former president to go along well with the rest of the prison population. I also read a statement that it would help prevent other inmates taking and publicly sharing pictures of him (since some inmates do manage to have phones even if they are forbidden).
Prison in general is one of the worst ways to rehabilitate someone though, I do agree with you.
kergonath•7h ago
Particularly for him who was very keen to be seen as tough on crime to get votes from the far right.
byroot•7h ago
The court couldn't prove beyond reasonable doubt that the money was used for his campaign.
However they were able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he knew what his subordinates were planing and that he did nothing to stop it.
In France conspiring to commit a crime is punishable, regardless of whether the crime actually happened or not. That's a law that has been crafted by Sarkozy's own party.
> The solitary confinement part is quite harsh
The solitary part isn't a punishment, but to ensure his safety. They even went as far as to allocated another cell for the two full time police officers of his security detail...
Also the upside is that he has a cell for himself, something a lot of prisoners would love to have given the over prison occupancy in France is 137% (and up to 200% in some specific prisons).
kergonath•7h ago
It’s for security reasons. It’s also why he’s got bodyguards.
orwin•7h ago
I would be wary of going through the appeal court. The judges motivation make it quite clear they were _extremely_ lenient and chose to ignore how contradictory a lot of statement were, and the other cases linked to this. If he is convicted for "subordination de temoin" in the related case, it is likely that his sentence would be set to a longer time.
The fact that Sarkozy started the Lybian war was also outside of the scope of the trial, sadly.
etiennebausson•7h ago
It's about making sure crimes have consequences, however highly placed you and your friends are.
Beretta_Vexee•6h ago
As the most serious cases at the national level are often tried in Paris, the high-security wing is filled with drug traffickers, murderers and terrorists, at least for the duration of the proceedings, which can take years in France.
Sarkozy is in the VIP wing with two bodyguards nearby. These are hardly the conditions one would imagine for isolation.
pfannkuchen•7h ago
csomar•6h ago
He probably thought he could get away with it. But make no mistake this is a political play and everyone involved is as dirty as the Paris Seine.
_ache_•6h ago
Maybe the Seine was heavily covered as dirty by the media but remember that you shouldn't swim in the San Francisco bay either. Wait for the next JO to hear about water quality problem with the LA beach area under rain.
SiempreViernes•3h ago