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

[marc fawzi]

I forwarded this thread so far to a good old friend of mine whose dad is an
EU minister who often deals with EU referendums and policy issues. Not sure
it's in his direct area but my friend works in the EU policy arena, too, so
I'm sure he'll have something to say about it.

Will forward any responses (minus identification) to this list.

On Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 6:41 PM, Andy Robinson <ldxar1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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