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A comment on Welcoming Tech Talent from Around the World to France. Parent comment

Re:Welcoming Tech Talent from Around the World to France by cm2187 on Monday July 03, 2017 @06:00AM (#14687114)
Not really. There is no more terrorism now than there has been for the past 50 years. We forget it but Europe, and France in particular has been constantly the target of violent terrorist attacks. The OAS for a while, then far left extremists and pro-Palestinian movements, then state-sponsored terrorism (Iran, Libya), the Algerian islamists (FIS), now a broader stream of home grown islamism, and of course all sort of other movements (corsican nationalists, far rights, etc).

I don't see why there would be a need for a Etat d'Urgence now but not in the 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s...

Plus the scale of casualties of terrorism is dwarfed by common crime for which the state response has been the exact opposite than to terrorism (i.e. to reduce or eliminate jail sentences).

And if this Etat d'Urgence was used solely against terrorism, it could be debatable, but instead it is clearly being used against lots of non-islamist terrorist targets (including preventing people from demonstrating against the previous government labour laws...) so I believe we are in a clean cut abuse of power situation.

More worryingly, Macron's exit from the Etat d'Urgent Permanent strategy involves basically making these exceptional measures permanent by adding them to common law.

So low expectations...

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Re:Welcoming Tech Talent from Around the World to France by raverbashing on Monday July 03, 2017 @07:15AM (#14687404)
(Though you are right about past events) No thanks, I don't think there's an acceptable level of terrorism (as I also don't believe in draconian security measures)
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Re:Welcoming Tech Talent from Around the World to France by cm2187 on Monday July 03, 2017 @07:32AM (#14687469)
There isn't a morally "acceptable level" of terrorism, rape, assaults, burglaries or pretty much any form of crime. But there is still nevertheless a balance to establish between surveillance/totalitarian state and a tolerance for some level of crime. An absolute zero level of terrorism means that the society is immune to some crazy guy taking the wheel of a lorry to run over people. To get there you need an unprecedented level of controls which I'd rather not even try to picture (and which cost I'd certainly not want to pay for with my taxes).
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