[p2p-research] Fwd: Blackout Europe: Telecoms Package dangers to open EU internet lähetti sinulle viestin Facebookissa.....

[Andy Robinson]

I don't think it's France as a country - it's Sarkozy in particular, and the
grouping of social forces he represents (i.e. the domestic insertion of
transnational capital, + the "deep state).  The French right has
traditionally been dominated by the Gaullists - nationalist conservatives on
a paternalistic Christian-democrat model.  Sarkozy, "The American" as he is
known, has the backing of the Gaullist coalition but is not a Gaullist and
does not belong to the Gaullist parties - he is a hard-core neoliberal.

I was pretty shocked at his election actually, as he stands for everything
the French (including the right-wing French) hate about the state of the
world.  Apparently his election victory was largely because, unlike previous
Gaullist candidates, he was able to pull in the far-right Le Pen vote in the
second round, because of his vicious racist and authoritarian views (it has
been traditional in France for Le Pen's voters, whatever Le Pen's wishes, to
transfer their votes to the Socialists in the second round because of their
hostility to globalisation).  Not surprisingly, once in power his popularity
has slumped - this was happening even before the credit crunch which has
hurt him further.  The unrest at the Strasbourg summit was described in one
of the media outlets as "the third credit crunch riot in France this year";
before this he faced a massive strike wave in November 2007 and student
occupations last year.  He has had to do a U-turn on his plans to crack down
on the banlieues and delay (possibly abandon) his education "reforms".

Like most neoliberals, he's very attracted to the "control society" model -
he lobbies constantly in the EU for this kind of thing.  The "three strikes"
policy was initially a domestic proposal.  He has introduced plans for an ID
card along the proposed British model (France currently has a basic low-tech
ID card) but seems to be waiting on how the British scheme pans out; he
apparently went along with EU proposals introduced by the British regime, to
insist that all existing ID cards add biometrics.  He was also behind an
ASBO-style "delinquency" law during his time as Interior Minister, expansion
of the French DNA database, use of "terror" laws against anarchists last
winter, threatened very cruel responses to strikers in 2007 and pushed a ban
on underage drinking (formerly rather tolerated in France).  When he got in,
I had him down as France's Thatcher - someone who was going to try to
destroy social resistance and impose a neoliberal model across society.  But
he seems to have realised his limits somewhat, and is now doing this kind of
thing by sneaky means.

It seems to be a growing pattern actually, that sneaky governments are using
the EU to push through things that would be harder to do domestically -
first they propose, support, or don't lobby against a proposal at
intergovernmental meetings carried out between leaders; then they come back
with an EU policy and say, sorry, we've got no choice, the EU are making us
do it.  The worst thing they have on the books at the moment is EU-wide
RFID-equipped biometric passports by 2019, containing fingerprints.  These
are already being implemented in countries which would likely never have
passed them domestically (e.g. Germany, Greece, Sweden, Romania).  I'm
hoping this falls apart before 2019 - apparently it is completely unsafe -
RFIDs have been cracked and edited, fingerprint scanners have been shown to
be easily foolable with £20 of basic resources and the whole scheme is
vastly expensive.

I would not be at all surprised if it turns out that Sarkozy has vested
interests in the recording industry and ID-tech, the same way it eventually
emerged that Blunkett had a job set up with an ID card company.

bw
Andy
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