France Using Emergency Powers To Prevent Climate Change Protests (theguardian.com) 248
Bruce66423 writes: Following the Paris massacre, the French government declared a state of emergency. One of the regulations this introduced was control of large scale gatherings, and one of the events that is being caught up in this is planned protests to do with the Climate Change conference in Paris next month. This has resulted in some activists being put under house arrest — yet other gathering, such as commercial street markets — are being allowed to go ahead. Funny that; anyone would think that the government is using the opportunity to suppress dissent.
"using the opportunity to suppress dissent." (Score:4, Insightful)
Is the French government a known climate denier?
Or are they suppressing mass demonstrations for other reasons?
zealots ^2 (Score:3, Insightful)
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I have never heard of protesters forming into opposing mobs and attacking eachother being a common problem. I think what you are thinking of is sporting events.
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Yeah, the reason you haven't heard of "counter demonstrators" is that I just made it up.
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I have a much harder science background than you do
But, let me guess, not actually in climatology? In fact, probably in Computer Science?
Just a guess.
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Not the current one. In France, the only climate change denier with any standing I can think of is a former Education minister (1997-2000), now completely marginalized.
I think the "dissent" aspect is actually some denier activists, and especially people proposing alternate solutions to whatever will come out of the governments' negociations. And perhaps, piggybacking on that, protests against nuclear energy, anti-capitalist activism, the usual. In fact, l
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You don't need to be a climate denier to get sick of some of the protesting crap that is happening in the world. France is in the bottom quartile of CO2 emissions in the EU countries both in absolute terms and per capita terms. They are also on the forefront of regulating diesel use, and attempting to reduce car use in the inner city (not helped by Paris's crap air quality).
The idea that people are protesting against the French government on environmental grounds seems quite strange to me.
Re:"using the opportunity to suppress dissent." (Score:5, Interesting)
The idea that people are protesting against the French government on environmental grounds seems quite strange to me.
You probably are not aware that there will be an international meeting in Paris soon. Many governments will be represented, and the protests are an attempt to somehow sway more governments to act?
But no. Far easier to knock down strawmen. Sick of protesting crap. Yeah, democracy and free speech are so sickening, ugh! Why don't we have more countries like North Korea and China where the governments really know how to crack down on these stupid protests! /s
Re:"using the opportunity to suppress dissent." (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"using the opportunity to suppress dissent." (Score:4, Insightful)
Is the French government a known climate denier?
Or are they suppressing mass demonstrations for other reasons?
Have you considered using the word 'heretic' instead of 'denier'?
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Re:"using the opportunity to suppress dissent." (Score:4, Informative)
No, the French government doesn't deny the existence of anthropogenic climate change. Nor does the US, China, or indeed virtually any major government or multinational corporation. Despite that fact, global CO2 emissions are still rising on an exponential curve. And all of these organisations are actively searching for more sources of fossil fuels at a time when science tells us we need to keep ~80% of known fossil reserves in the ground to avoid dangerous climate change
Climate denial-ism is a sideshow intended to keep you distracted. The media loudly promote a debate that doesn't really exist any more so that people can feel good they aren't a part of the evil climate deniers causing the problem. Liberals who loudly proclaim the importance of fighting climate change while doing everything they can to increase emissions have been far more of a threat to our climate than deniers for at least 20 years. When Obama gives another inspirational speech about preserving the environment for future generations everybody claps, and nobody bothers to mention the fact that the man has authorised an unprecedented increase in US domestic oil and gas production.
The COP conference in Paris will be little more than another sideshow intended to keep you distracted. We already know that there will be no legally binding agreements to reduce emissions and that the voluntary pledges countries are prepared to sign up to will likely lead to some 3-4C of warming even if implemented fully.
The reality is we live in a world that is gearing up for more, not less, fossil fuel use. Despite the loud proclamations of governments and media corporations to the contrary.
That is why protest is necessary and why the French government is actively suppressing dissent with these measures.
Read the news, CO2 emissions flat (Score:4, Insightful)
2014 saw no rise [iea.org] in CO2 emissions.
Of course, since years of rapid CO2 rise with no corresponding temperature increases (including historical records as far back as we can look) have shown clearly CO2 is not a factor in climate change, that doesn't matter much...
Hypocrite (Score:4, Insightful)
They are just joining in on the fun, America, UK, Australia have all been abusing legislature regarding terrorists for many many years now. France will not be denied their piece of the totalitarian pie.
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Different groups (university reforms in the mid 1980's) could gather protesters from all over France in the using national, easy to connect to French networking telco systems.
The main thrust for France is to quell domestic protests and stop leaking of information eg French gov staff or press background to a Rainbow Warrior like event. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Been able to track the formation of
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Heh, sorry then, my humour must have missed a beat today.
Ahem, they just want to double down on the fun...
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"Event" is a fancy term for state terrorism.
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French journalists really helped New Zealand uncover the French.
http://www.theguardian.com/env... [theguardian.com]
http://www.theguardian.com/env... [theguardian.com]
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This is how it begins (Score:5, Insightful)
Where have we seen this before? In every country that became a dictatorship.
Re:This is how it begins (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is how it begins (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't have expected the average American to tolerate minimum wage thugs groping children and elderly without effective results for years, either... but apparently, the terrorists won that round.
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Do you really think France, and especially the French, would accept a "state of emergency" lasting years?
No, they will make the measures permanent like every other country that has reduced civil liberties. When?
This isn't the first time France has declared state of emergency, an the previous times it was removed when it expired.
But feel free to enjoy your ideologicaly inspired cynicism.
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Do you really think France, and especially the French, would accept a "state of emergency" lasting years?
No, they will make the measures permanent like every other country that has reduced civil liberties. When?
This isn't the first time France has declared state of emergency, an the previous times it was removed when it expired.
But feel free to enjoy your ideologicaly inspired cynicism.
The first thing they did after declaring the state of emergency was to amend it so it could last 9 times as long as it was originally allowed. But sure, they intend for it to be temporary. Apart from the fact that they are already talking about extending it again.
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If importing and radicalizing Islam was just a tool to justify totalitarian rule, well mission accomplished, it is justified.
There might be alternatives with more freedom but the status quo isn't it. Le Pen's call to rearm France's citizens is a good step towards creating a society in which more freedom can be possible again as long as the fifth column is present.
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So what you're saying is that the government has renewable powers.
Isn't that what the treehuggers are in favour of?
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Wasn't the previous time in 1961? Do you expect us to believe that politicians are no worse than 50 years ago?
Why does gov't care about climate change protest? (Score:5, Insightful)
Find a suitable reason to declare a state of emergency. Use the state of emergency to suppress legitimate protests. An event that outrages people used to remove civil liberties and the opportunity for dissent. Where have we seen this before? In every country that became a dictatorship.
Right, so the French government that recognizes climate change and agrees it is a major issue to be dealt with is afraid of protesters who recognize climate change and believe it is a major issue to be dealt with?
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Perhaps it has more to do with getting the populace used to suppression of dissent?
Re:Why does gov't care about climate change protes (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps it has more to do with getting the populace used to suppression of dissent?
What dissent? The protesters and the government agree.
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They were going to protest, were they not? How is that not dissent? Just because they may not have been about to protest against the French government does not stop it from being dissent.
You are being obtuse. The story title is "France Using Emergency Powers To Prevent Climate Change Protests". The story is about the suppression of protests. Protests are about dissent.
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Protests are about dissent.
More than one protester has gone to protest just because protesting is very fun.
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My mother went to a CND protest because she wanted to sleep with one of the organisers.
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Maybe, just maybe, you could look at the big picture and give c
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I'd have let it go ahead. Maybe it would tempt them into acting, and if you lose a few crusties in the process who cares?
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Alert ... logic FAIL!!!!!
It doesn't matter why these people tried to demonstrate. They wanted to be on the streets making their political views known and the government suppressed their rights to political speech. Suppressing demonstrations, protests, whatever you want to call them is a path that every dictatorship has gone down.
Frankly, I ca
Re:Why does gov't care about climate change protes (Score:4, Insightful)
Does it really agree, or is it just throwing around two-faced platitudes it has no intention of honoring? Like Obama when he vowed to renegotiate NAFTA, or Hillary now being against the TPP after she spent years drafting it as SOS.
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Obamas a crook and Hilary's a mafioso.
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Why don't YOU throw a tantrum another time????
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Sadly people in Europe have seen it more than once that a "good" government imposed laws during times of crisis that allowed shortcuts past a limitation of power so they could act in a time of crisis, only to see a dictator elected soon after that abused those shortcuts to eliminate the separation of powers.
I don't want to say that our current governments are "evil". I just say it's dangerous to implement tools that allow for the elimination of oversight because you can't be certain that their spirit will b
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Sincerely,
A U.S. Citizen
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Use the state of emergency to suppress legitimate protests.
Define "legitimate protest". We are talking about protests against the government which runs one of the lowest CO2 producing countries in the EU, a government who recognises climate change, and a government who's leading the way in curbing emissions, not just global warming, but also things like NOx with new regulations. I wonder how much of this protest was actually "legitimate".
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So instead, do nothing. Don't worry about people getting slaughtered. After all, France is a big country, it can afford to have a few hundred people murdered every once in a while.
Does that sound better?
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We have elections because they are meaningless. Show me one country where there is a party that actually has a chance to become part of a government that would change the status quo.
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Show me a single democratic country where the voters agree which way the status quo should be changed. It seems to me that status quo rarely changes a lot in a single election because it already reflects a decent compromise between the interests of various people, organizations and ideals that make up a nation.
It's not the mirr
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When more people start voting for the green party, then the other parties pay more actual attention to environmental issues. There's always more mouth flapping than action, but sometimes something gets done. And sometimes it's even a good thing.
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That has worked in the 80s in Europe. But that ship has sailed. Today politics is not about "what I can do right and that's why you should vote for me". It's "what horrible things the other party will do so you better vote for me instead".
That needs not content, no promises and most of all it makes absolutely certain that no third party can rise.
Yes/No (Score:5, Insightful)
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Considering the security measures required to get into a stadium in france vs a group of protesters and someone wandering up with a suicide vest strapped to them. Well, there does appear to be a security risk to general people. Those protests would be a splody-dopes dream.
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Before Fox would air a new episode of 24, would you put a new set of vinyl sheets on your mattress in preparation for a night of terrified bedwetting?
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Before Fox would air a new episode of 24, would you put a new set of vinyl sheets on your mattress in preparation for a night of terrified bedwetting?
Do you turn around and ignore reasonable assessments of threats, and then bury your head in the sand when there is a credible possibility? After all, that's what led to the cancellation of a soccer game in Germany last week. One can't forget about what happened in Brussels last week either.
It's fun to play 'what if' so let's do that. Let's say the government doesn't use emergency powers to block the protests. And a couple of weeks after a series of terrorist attacks, terrorists use the opportunity to sp
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I don't think you know what splidey dope means...
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I don't think you know what splidey dope means...
Really? [urbandictionary.com]
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Why don't they allow the protesters but set up security measures?
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Yhea, but football matches make money!
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Football match;
One venue;
Few, if any, in masks
Security checks including searches expected
Protests;
Occur all over town
Many protesters with masks and backpacks.
Security checks seen ass oppressive and will be fought against.
See the difference?
Protest march v Street Market is right contrast (Score:2)
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Banning a climate change protest would have little to no impact on the general populace.
Banning a football match would lead to the unravelling of modern civilisation as we know it.
In both cases life did go on. :-)
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Atypical security personnel armed and trained to deal with militants tend not to mix well with an angry mob of protest [wikipedia.org]
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So? The US was also one of the first representative governments in modern times, and look how that turned out.
credible threat ? (Score:2)
Eco-terrorists threatened to blow up a cloud !
could be a humor or spell check failure...
Although I heavily disagree... (Score:2)
I think they're just trying to stop protests in general at the moment. Protests create unrest and anger, and I'm guessing the government's deemed the situation unstable enough that they want to minimize any potential chance of more violence.
That being said though, I don't agree with that choice at all. I don't think climate change would destabilize the country further, and there's a great risk of abuse with it.
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So you get this massive protest with thousands of people in one area. What happens when bombs and gunshots start going off? I don't mean the protesters would get violent, but what about ISIS terrorism taking advantage of the crowd and chaos.
Perhaps this is the government realizing that it cannot provide security for both dignitaries and protesters at this time.
Oh really? (Score:2)
Oh, yeah... (Score:2)
...that's not suspicious at all. No hidden agenda there, no sir-ee-bob...
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...that's not suspicious at all. No hidden agenda there, no sir-ee-bob...
Right, because the French gov't wants to suppress opinions that the French gov't agrees with? That climate change is real and its an important issue that must be dealt with?
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They need a Protest (Score:2)
A protest needs to be organized to protest the crackdown against protests.
Human right convention suspended (Score:4, Informative)
French people seems to have reacted quite well to the killings, but french political leaders seems to be drowning in panic. They even suspended France's application of European Convention on Human Rights [coe.int]. From this link's France section:
Some of [the measures], prescribed by the decrees of 14 November 2015 and 18 November 2015 and by the Law of 20 November 2015, may involve a derogation from the obligations under the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms
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You will notice that this is generally the case with such events. The population is usually not fazed at all and continues their life with politicians going apeshit.
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it is the job of the government to sometimes worry about things that the average person does not.
I am not sure that taking judges out of the police processes is something the average person does not worry about.
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so did Toronto's G20.
Canada is involved in European Right Convention?
Some context (Score:2)
Damned if you do and damned if you don't (Score:2)
Scenario 1; Ban protesting and be labelled a oppressive government.
Scenario 2; Do not ban protests and a terrorist attack occurs during the protest. The Government is blamed for the attack as they allowed the protest.
In a large protest it is impossible to differentiate between lawful protesters in masks and terrorists getting ready to attack.
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Scenario 3: Leave the traditional world where under let's-all-agree-not-to-think-further-than-the-length-of-a-news-headline reasoning there are only scenarios 1 and 2 and go like:
Do not ban protests und tell everyone that in deciding this there is a risk but in our opinion it's worth it. Say: "Be aware of this if you take part in the protest and we encourage you to use your freedom to do so but you may want to leave the kids at home". A terrorist attack might occur, yes.
Which protesters? (Score:2)
Are they arresting people who are pointing out that not enough is being done, or those who are worried about the bottome lines of the big polluters?
Really? (Score:2)
Re:Protests? (Score:5, Informative)
My quick scan is that it's a crackdown on protests in general, not necessarily on any particular issue. Not that I'm condoning it.
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but then I guess I would have to be fair and support an anti-protest protest protest.
I can see right now this is not going to end well...
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Re: Protests? (Score:3)
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It's protests all the way down. I'm surprised they haven't gone on strike yet.
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It's France, not Italy.
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You are mixing countries:
In France they do blockades of motorways,blockades of factories and similar. They are thus much more active in their protests than some place like Italy where people go on strike and go home...
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It's true. Chicago is the most beautiful shade of purple around this time of year.
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Bernie Sanders says they do.
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"Never let a crisis go to waste" -- Rahm Emanuel, Mayor of Chicago (which is the most violet and corrupt city in the United States of America).
That might be Saul Alinsky, a 1960s organizer and radical, author of "Rules for Radicals". A mentor of sorts to Emanuel and Obama.
Also related to Che Guevara, the communist revolutionary who wrote in his "Guerrilla Warfare" that when the peasants are safe and content one must create the conditions by which the government will abuse and kill them so as to bring the peasants to the side of revolution. That their previous safety and comfort is an obstacle to revolution. In other words manufacture a crisis i
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Turn anything you can into a tool to fix things you think are wrong with the world? Perish the thought.
Like get peasants killed, sacrificed, to fulfill your dream of communist revolution as in Che's advice?
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So the French govt can try to keep the would-be protesters alive and be condemned, or risk a catastrophe for which they would be condemned. At least the former is highly unlikely to result in any deaths.
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I have an idea. Handle it the way some of the smarter states in the USA do it. About 1 in 100 people in the crowd has a concealed weapon. Try attacking that. Return fire assurance is infinitely more effective as a defense and a deterrent than some ridiculous laws and metal detectors and bomb sniffing dogs and all that predictable, bypassable nonsense.
ISIS pledge to kill thousands of Americans by opening gun stores across the Midwest [newsthump.com]
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About 1 in 100 people in the crowd has a concealed weapon
List of mass shootings, just for the 2010s, just schools... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States#2010s [wikipedia.org]. Solution is not that simple, and this is not because you want to carry a gun that you have to let a whole population, that includes a lot of irresponsible people, use a gun as well. What happened in France is exceptional, and you seize the opportunity of an exceptional event to promote your own ideas. This is typically what do extreme parties (esp. right side), and
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...and you seize the opportunity of an exceptional event to promote your own ideas.
You mean like diving on the shooting at a school to promote gun bans? There are thousands of kids dead at the hands of criminals in the inner cities every year, some by guns, some by drugs. There's no campaign to figure that shit out. No, it makes a hell of a lot better media and sound bites when it's a nice white suburban family whose lost a child.