Scandals in Communist Frenchystan
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@anonymous234 There are similar concerns in The Netherlands. They recently moved to ban electronic accumulating of votes - while voting has been back to paper for years and counting the votes for one voting station already happened by hand, now aggregating those counts on municipal and national level also cannot be done electronically for fear the software will be manipulated.
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@PleegWat I don't know how the results are aggregated, but in individual polling places in France, the votes are counted manually by citizens (with officials giving instructions). Also, the aggregation is simply adding the counts from all polling places (it might be different in the Netherlands), so not much is needed beyond a pen, paper and maybe a calculator (handheld, no connection to anything). By the way, the governments publishes the results aggregated by municipality, département and region, as well as the fully aggregated results.
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@Khudzlin To my understanding that's pretty much the case here too - I'm not sure why manual adding up is such a big deal.
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@PleegWat said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
now aggregating those counts on municipal and national level also cannot be done electronically for fear the software will be manipulated.
If the results for each voting station are public, then the aggregation can't really be manipulated. All it would take is one person to redo the calculations in Excel for the fraud to be caught.
If I wanted to manipulate an election, I'd focus on how the results are sent from the voting station to the counting/publishing place. If you can distract or bribe the person carrying the papers, then switch them with your own forged ones, profit.
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@anonymous234 said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
If I wanted to manipulate an election, I'd focus on how the results are sent from the voting station to the counting/publishing place. If you can distract or bribe the person carrying the papers, then switch them with your own forged ones, profit.
If I wanted to manipulate an election, I'd do what the Russians are probably doing, i.e. spread information (false or true, doesn't matter) that benefits the candidate you want. Everybody will be on the look-out for an actual cheat such as the one you describe, so there is a significant risk of being caught doing so, and the consequences can be awful in terms of international relations (being proven as messing up the elections of another country ranks pretty high in the list of casus belli!).
Much better to work underhand, nobody can prove anything (see the US) and it's fairly easy to spam enough medias to shift the results by 1-2% (anything more than that would be too visible in a transparent system anyway).
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
false or true, doesn't matter
It seems you have been following politics for a long time.
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
If I wanted to manipulate an election, I'd do what the Russians are probably doing, i.e. spread information (false or true, doesn't matter) that benefits the candidate you want.
The New York Times - Breaking News, US News, World News and Videos
Live news, investigations, opinion, photos and video by the journalists of The New York Times from more than 150 countries around the world. Subscribe for coverage of U.S. and international news, politics, business, technology, science, health, arts, sports and more.
???
EDIT: e.g.:
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@boomzilla Well, "spreading information" is what the media in general does, by design. If your point is that the NYT views more favourably a democrat than a republican, well, duh. If you're trying to say that the NYT tries to influence people, in the same way as the Russian are probably doing, well, duh again. And when it comes to the Russian trying to shape the election the way they'd like, of course doing it this way is the smart way because it is indistinguishable from what legitimate media do.
The rest is a moral standpoint: which entities do you feel are morally right to push the choice of the voters? Political parties, of course. Media from the country, it's widely assumed to be OK unless they have a hidden agenda (but if their agenda is not hidden, this is generally accepted). Various individuals in position of power or fame, speaking in their own name, are now common. Foreign countries (not their leaders), acting without saying so, doesn't seem so good.
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
The rest is a moral standpoint: which entities do you feel are morally right to push the choice of the voters? Political parties, of course. Media from the country, it's widely assumed to be OK unless they have a hidden agenda (but if their agenda is not hidden, this is generally accepted). Various individuals in position of power or fame, speaking in their own name, are now common. Foreign countries (not their leaders), acting without saying so, doesn't seem so good.
The thing is, a lot of people think NYT is speaking objectively instead of trying to advance the agenda of one party or the other. They really don't view reading the newspaper as being told what to think, even though that's what happens in practice. Is it really that much worse for people to get their opinions from somebody in Russia than from someone in the NYT office? I'd say both situations are equally bad.
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@remi It was mostly a cheap joke at their expense, though it's certainly not uncommon for mainstream media outlets to spread fake news, innocently or not (remember Dan Rather and the fake memos?).
I think that sort of thing is far more damaging than fringe sites no one has heard of spreading rumors. Yeah, it's disturbing, to be sure, but I remain unconvinced at the efficacy of such attempts. I think the Clinton Chinese money machine in the 1990s was more troublesome. Also, this:
Obama admin. sent taxpayer money to campaign to oust Netanyahu
The State Department paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayers grants to an Israeli group that used the money to build a campaign to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in last year's
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@boomzilla Part of the issue I think is that there's so much pressure to be 'frist' with news nowadays that stories are published before due diligence can be done. After all, why waste time confirming whether Obama actually farted in Cameron's soup or not when you can put it on Twitter and get 10,000 retweets within the hour? And that's before you get to outright fabrications, phone hacking, and all that shit.
The only popular news outlet I trust nowadays is the BBC, and even then, I wouldn't hand them a loaded gun and say "Don't shoot me." Heck, I'd think twice about a loaded water pistol.
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@RaceProUK said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
The only popular news outlet I trust nowadays is the BBC
They tend to be biased towards the UK government of the day, mostly in the choice of who they talk to and who they ignore. (Also, they dumb things down far too much, but that's true of virtually all media outlets.)
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@RaceProUK Yeah, for pretty much anything you have to wait a few days for people to look into the story and confirm or refute what's going on.
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@dkf said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
They tend to be biased towards the UK government of the day, mostly in the choice of who they talk to and who they ignore.
This image wasn't exactly what I was looking for, but I'm posting it anyway:
But yeah, the BBC gets their money from the taxpayer at a rate agreed to with the government, so it makes sense they don't want to give the government an excuse to cut their funding.
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@RaceProUK said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
But yeah, the BBC gets their money from the taxpayer at a rate agreed to with the government, so it makes sense they don't want to give the government an excuse to cut their funding.
Partially that, yes, but it's got a bit more brown-nosing to it. It mostly didn't matter too much until fairly recently, as the general policy expressed by government was usually “don't rock the boat and project plenty of soft power by following the Reithian maxims” but things are going nasty; the politicians have gained too much control. :(
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@dkf And the whole situation isn't helped by News Corp trying to buy influence with the government.
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BTW if it is now called Frenchystan does that mean the Muslims have already taken over and it is now a Muslim country?
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@lucas1 said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
BTW if it is now called Frenchystan does that mean the Muslims have already taken over and it is now a Muslim country?
Nah. It just means that there's someone called Stanley from France somewhere about.
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@dkf I am sure that is a joke, but I have no idea what it is.
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@remi said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
If I wanted to manipulate an election, I'd do what the Russians are probably doing, i.e. spread information (false or true, doesn't matter) that benefits the candidate you want.
Why bother with generalised misinformation when you can give the people that matter to you the misinformation they want to see?
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/the-secret-agenda-of-a-facebook-quiz.html
@RaceProUK said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@dkf And the whole situation isn't helped by News Corp trying to buy
influence withthe government.FTFY. HTH. HAND
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@Quwertzuiopp said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
The moderate socialists (SPD) got their shit together and actually nominated someone who seems like a good person and is seen as trustworthy, Martin Schulz.
I wondered how he's so popular, because here he was generally criticised for his reaction to Brexit. So I checked what he actually said…
@asdf said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
I would love to be that optimistic, but Eastern Europe has since switched into full opposition mode
… was spot on. The politicians here in Czechia always talk about “them” in Brussels whenever something comes they don't like. And then half of the cases it turns out the law passed here goes well above and beyond what the EU Committee or Council passed and turns reasonable proposal to an absurd mockery.
And Czechia is in many aspects much better than Hungary and Poland. In big part because here there is little chance of any party getting majority in foreseeable future.
That said, on Friday they ran a commentary here how when V4 countries suggested something (regarding the refugee crisis), it was loathed as outrageous and unimaginable, but later on other countries just went ahead and just did it—border fence in Austria, limit for number of accepted refugees per yer also in Austria, now detaining those who are to be extradited etc. Because for long it was all “wir schaffen das” and no backup plans or acknowledgement of follow-on problems.
Of course when the proposals are because unwillingness to contribute any resources, it's still wrong. Because whatever the plan is, it will need money and work. Yeah, the politicians here are idiots.
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@boomzilla said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
I'm sure you guys, who live an ocean away from the US, know a lot more about American voters who identify as Republicans than I do.
We might. We have (in Czechia) our own clone of Trump for some three years already. Well, he's split across two guys. Which makes sense, because the responsibility is split across two guys here too.
- President Zeman, who is crude, insults everybody and lies, often quite blatantly. Fortunately he does not have any real power—he's only something like general ambassador—but sometimes he causes international scandals.
- Minister Babiš, minister of economy and deputy prime minister, who is a tycoon that stormed the political scene with the (well, correct) argument that all the other parties are corrupt. Of course his own wealth is not crystal-clear either, like nobody's who made money in the wild transformation.
I can't speak for the motives myself though, because I didn't vote for either.
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French police conclude 'anal rape' of suspect with cop's truncheon was an accident
An initial French police investigation has found insufficient evidence to support allegations that a 22-year-old man was anally raped with a police truncheon, a police source said Thursday, suggesting they believe the officer's baton slipped up the man's anus by accident.
I Slipped in the Shower, Doc™
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@LaoC
Since the Oury Jalloh case, police officers telling absolutely ridiculous lies to cover up severe criminal offenses don't surprise me anymore.
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@LaoC said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
An initial French police investigation … raped with a police truncheon
In France police investigates police? Is it at least separate department?
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@Bulb said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
In France police investigates police? Is it at least separate department?
Yes, and yes. It's called (I think) the "Inspection Générale de la Police", nicknamed by policemen the "bœuf carottes" from a traditional French stew, because they supposedly let you (= the poor innocent policeman who happened to hit a bit to hard an ugly thug) simmer for a long time and keep on the heat while interrogating you. Which I guess must be rather unusual for people more used to hitting suspects during custody than simply asking them questions...
As you can guess, they don't have a reputation for impartiality. There are very few policemen who get indicted by them, and whenever that happens the government usually does everything they can without visibly subverting the course of justice to avoid the police unions screaming too loudly. Yeah, I don't have a lot of admiration for the French police oversight system.
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So, the monkeys are still performing. Pretty much everyone over here in France wishes they'd stop.
François Fillon has been "Mise en examen" with regards to the aprently ficticious job he was paying his wife for. Basically, this means that he's not been charged with anything (yet) but there appears to be enough evidence of wrongdoing that he could be, and he's required to account for his actions in front of a judge. A couple of months back, he said very loudly that, should he be «mise en examen», he would stand down, as obviously someone in that state couldn't possibly stand for president. This was a dual attack on Sarkozy and Juppé both of whom have - ahem - "had contact" with the judiciary in the past. This wasn't the first time he'd said such things, either; banning of those with legal issues has been a long term thing for him.
So, of course, he's stood down.
Not.
Wherever he goes, he's followed by crowds of people brandishing pots and pans (his wife having allegedly been paid to stay at home and do the cooking, not that she would have as they live in a chateau and have people to do that sort of thing). His house has been searched as part of the investigation. A bunch of his campaign staff, including his spokesman, have resigned. The UDI, centrists who were standing with «Les Républicains» , are now standing against. Hundreds of ostensibly right wing mayors, the support of over 500 of whom is required in order to even be allowed to stand for president, are withdrawing their support for him (not enough of them for it to be a worry yet, there's about 35,000 of them in total). He's gone into Tr*mp mode, publicly decrying a biased media and legal system. He is frankly unable to talk about his policies, as his allegedly illegal nepotism drowns everything out.
But he's still standing.
Meanwhile, Marine has been called up to see the judge on suspicion of corruption and embezzlement. She's said she'll go and see him after the election. Far too busy to deal with that sort of thing, you see?
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@tufty Nitpick: Fillon was "mis en examen" (liaison is likely to make the pronunciation identical, though). If it happened to Le Pen, she would be "mise en examen". Also, the process is called "mise en examen".
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@Khudzlin Bugger, of course you're right.
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@tufty The show must go on! Politics are the circus that never stops.
How do you think the election will go? From what I gathered its probably going to be Macron vs Le Penn since Macron is the only one not being corrupt and flinging shit and Le Penn gets a pass from her voters because when she flings shit its her "speaking the truth" and being corrupt is "fake news". But I also know that the french election system can be very unpredictable and swing around hard. What do you suppose the outcome will be? I mean any sane person is probably going to grit their teeth and vote Macron to prevent Le Penn right? right?
Speaking of elections, remember when I mentioned the Social Democrats managed actually pick someone as a candidate with a bit of charisma? Yeah, apparently german politics have been starved for politicians with charisma for such an enormously long time that the mere sight of someone with a bit of it has started a hype train of such epic proportions that I never could have guessed this to turn out like it does.
WTF.
After such a long time of Merkel and with the populace feeling that some kind of change has to happen for Germany to prosper and for the EU to survive, lot of people feel that Martin Schulz is the perfect candidate. Remeber how literally everyone right of Merkel bashed her hoping to push the scales farther right? Well, that kind of backfired on them now, because apparently of all that only "Merkel sux" stuck with the people and now that there is more than only one inevitable option (Merkel) people rush to him even though he represents everything the right hates the most (Same rights for Homosexual marriages, including adoption rights/Pro-EU/Left wing). But I already told you I think AFD voters vote them mostly as protest.
The far right AFD lost more than five percentage points in polls within days. The social democrats (SPD) suddenly jumped up a dozen percentage points or so giving them percentages they didn't even dare dream of for decades.
This is going to be a very interesting election in every way. It will be especially interesting to see wether this literal hype train can keep going long enaugh, but seeing how completely in shock the conservatives are I very much doubt they will do much against it, so the question again becomes "Massive center coalition" or "Small Left wing Coalition"
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@Quwertzuiopp said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
The show must go one!
/me waits for the day a show goes two, just to mess with @Quwertzuiopp :P
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@RaceProUK Impossibru, my spellaring is unfailings!
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@Quwertzuiopp said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
I mean any sane person is probably going to grit their teeth and vote
MacronClinton to preventLe PennTrump right?@Quwertzuiopp said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
I mean any sane person is probably going to grit their teeth and vote
MacronRemain to preventLe PennLeave right?
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@RaceProUK Sight
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@Quwertzuiopp said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
What do you suppose the outcome will be?
The betting markets are giving her ~25% chance to win... Trump had 20% and won, so, it's quite possible.
OTOH there's still a lot of campaigning to do, and if the other parties can get their shit together and attack the bullshit she says instead of just deflecting or ignoring, they should have a good chance.
Germany's doing alright though. There's no way AfD is getting any power.
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@anonymous234 said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
Germany's doing alright though. There's no way AfD is getting any power.
Not surprising given not even the deeply conservative right wing of the conservatives wants to touch them with a ten foot pole. If they stay where they are they are going to mildly inconvene every other party because ignoring their 7% makes coalition building harder and if they continue their self-canibalisation for some more they are going to fall just short of the 5% hurdle and not get a single seat just like all other far right parties have ever done.
Speaking of coaliton building, the neoliberals are apparently back at 7%. If that continues, coalition building is going to be a nightmare because either big party will have to go into coalition with either their arch enemy just like right now or build a coaliton with literally every party except the AFD and their arch enemy. fun Fun FUN times ahead
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@Quwertzuiopp said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
either big party will have to go into coalition with either their arch enemy just right now or build a coaliton with literally every party except the AFD and their arch enemy
Is it possible to form a minority government in Germany? There was talk that the Tories might end up having to do that at the last UK election, then they got a majority against everyone's expectations
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@anonymous234 It's quite possible Le Pen will make it to the second round (coming in 1st or 2nd in the first), though I would prefer if she didn't. But it's very unlikely that she'll win the second round, especially if her opponent isn't from LR. 15 years ago, her father making it to the second round resulted in the biggest landslide under the current system (Chirac got 82% of the vote, when the norm is 55% or less for the winner), because a lot of people would rather have Chirac (a known crook, though a likable one, unlike Fillon) than him.
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@Jaloopa Technically yes, we had a few but they were all very short because it only ever happened because a coalition was ended or parlamentarians left their faction. The problem is that you need a majority of the parliament to vote in the cancelor. In germany only majors and half of the parliament is elected directly, everything else is done indirectly, the other half of parliament is determined by the second vote that is not for a person but for a party, and seats are distributed so that every party gets the exact percentage of seats as they got per second vote. All other posts, including the president, the parlamentary president, the cancelor and their government must be approved by a parliament majority so its practially impossible to form a minority government because you would need to depend on the goodwill of another non-involved faction that you simply can't get without a binding coalition contract involving them.
So no, not really. Technically, yes, but practically it has never happened and will probably never happen, but Germany has a long standing tradition of coalition governments anyways. For us it is the norm. A simple majority is the rare exception, we've allways had more than three relevant parties at all times. The only ones who semi-reliably pull off simple majorities are the conservatives in Bavaria. But at a federal level even the conservatives couldn't get a non-coalition government if they got the majority because their faction is actually made up of two parties in eternal coalition (CDU/CSU)
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@Khudzlin At the moment, it seems more than likely that she will make it to the second round. Which is part of my gripe against other parties, they've taken that for granted all along and fought between themselves for the other spot in the second round, rather than focussing on the very minor fact that there is between 1/4 and 1/3 of the electorate that is ready to vote for ideas that make Trump and Brexit seem reasonable.
She will probably lose in the second round, whoever is her opponent. The right's candidate (Fillon at the moment) will not get all the votes from the left (which Chirac more or less managed in 2002), especially the hard left, but that won't matter as Le Pen will gain very few votes in that scenario (a few leftist will vote for her, but not in any significant numbers). Against a centrist candidate (Macron, and maybe Juppé if he gets to replace Fillon), she will gain a few votes from the right, but almost all the left will gather behind her opponent and she'll be trounced (again, probably not in the numbers of 2002, but still significantly). Where she might stand a chance is against a left candidate, such as the socialist one (Hamon), because he has a very hard left line (which in itself causes a lot of left moderates to swing back to the centre and to Macron), so the right would probably not vote for him in large numbers. She's still predicted to loose in that case, by more than the margin of errors of polls.
The nightmare scenario is if the other candidate is Mélanchon, i.e. extreme left (well, there are more extreme than him, but they won't go above 1-2 % ). Because at that point, choosing the lesser of two evils is not easy when both are really evil. It looks unlikely at the moment that he could get to the second round (he is trailing by at least 10 % in the polls behind the other candidates), but if Fillon keeps loosing ground, and Macron does a few campaign mistakes (like he did recently -- nothing major, but I've seen some polls showing not only the voting predictions but also the voters' confidence in their choice, and he has the lowest number of all, so it might not take a lot to swing voters away from him), it's not totally impossible.
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@tufty said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
François Fillon has been "Mise en examen"
Grammar
apart, I think he still has some very, very small wiggle room (which he's using to the full to renege on his previous vows to stand down if he were to be "mis en examen"), because he is actually not yet "mis en examen":He has been summoned to appear in front of the public prosecutor on March 15th, and at that point he will be "mis en examen" (in theory there are other possible outcomes, but that seems unlikely that the moment). The rub is that March 15th is a couple of days after the official deadline for declaring candidacy to the election, so at that point it becomes much more difficult for him to stand down (or rather, it becomes almost impossible for another candidate to replace him -- the Conseil Constitutionnel could decide to postpone the election but we're getting into unknown territory here...).
So he can still somehow claim not to be yet officially inculpated, and if he hangs on until the deadline, nobody will be able to make him stand down. Of course, that doesn't fool anyone, but at that point, I don't think anyone is any doubt of what he's really doing!
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@tufty said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
Hundreds of ostensibly right wing mayors, the support of over 500 of whom is required in order to even be allowed to stand for president, are withdrawing their support for him (not enough of them for it to be a worry yet, there's about 35,000 of them in total).
Wait wait wait. 35,000 right wing mayors?
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@RaceProUK said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
@Quwertzuiopp said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
I mean any sane person is probably going to grit their teeth and vote
MacronTrump to preventLe PennClinton right?Whew. That was a close one.
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@remi Well, I think that Mélenchon is nowhere near as evil as Le Pen, but I get that right-wing voters would think so. And Hamon's line looks hard left because of how far right the PS has drifted these last years (economically at least). Also, I wouldn't classify Juppé as a centrist (again, a measure of how far right the traditional right has drifted, trying to get votes from the far right).
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@boomzilla said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
35,000 right wing mayors
36569 communes according
It really is a silly thing in France where there are a lot, really a lot of small, really small local governments. According to the above article the mean population size is only 380 inhabitants.
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@Khudzlin I agree that Mélenchon is slightly less evil. But he still wants to get straight out of the EU and other policies that are at best ridiculous, at worst very harmful. I mean, he seriously thinks that Venezuela is a model to follow.
I also agree that Juppé isn't really centrist, but I mentioned him as part of discussing how votes would shift in an hypothetical second round, and I think in that regard he would attract much more left votes than Fillon would. Still, that is only speculation at the moment, and given that no-one can force Fillon to stand down, and that he only has to hang on for about 10 days until the candidacy deadline, I think he will stay (and once the deadline is passed, the right will have no choice than to back him as strongly as they can, if anything to keep their chances for the parliementary elections that will follow in June).
As for Hamon... even by the PS standard of the 80's, he would still be to the left of the party. Yes, the party has somewhat drifted to the centre since then, and that makes him even more to the left of the party, but this shift happened for a reason, which is that it does reflect a large chunk of their voters (the PS always had these internal struggles...)! And that's what matters when it comes to an election today, not what his line would look like in an hypothetical PS that doesn't exist, and the fact is that at the moment, his line is much closer to Mélenchon far-left than Macron centre-left, so dissatisfied voters in between tend to flock to Macron. The PS had very little chance to win this election, what with being the incumbent and other things, but with someone occupying the middle political ground, taking a strong left line was probably the worst thing they could do, in terms of electoral strategy (but of course, I can't blame them for following their ideas and not a purely electoral strategy!).
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@remi Yeah, I agree that left-wing voters would more easily vote for Juppé than Fillon. I'm one of those left-wing voters. To be honest, I didn't follow politics back in the 80's, because I was born after Miterrand became president (2002 was my first presidential election). And I lean far left in any case, ever since I started to follow politics (there's a French movie title that sums up the situation).
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@Khudzlin said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
And I lean far left in any case
You can have surgery to correct that nowa- Oh, wait, you mean you lean politically
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@RaceProUK said in Scandals in Communist Frenchystan:
You can have surgery to correct that
Short, shrivelled, and always to the left!
Did the NYT talk about "the Quiet Grandeur of the Courts" when decisions went against President Obama?
Communes of France - Wikipedia
