The France thread

[Witness]

6 Messidor CCXXIX

Landmark trial in France over avalanche of threats against teen critic of Islam

A landmark cyberbullying trial in Paris – over thousands of threats against a teenager who strongly criticised Islam in online posts – is blazing a trail in efforts to punish and prevent online abuse.

Thirteen young people of various backgrounds and religions from around France face potential prison time for charges including online harassment, online death threats and online rape threats in the two-day trial wrapping up Tuesday.

It is the first such trial since France created a new court in January to prosecute online crimes, including harassment and discrimination.

One of the defendants wants to become a police officer. Another says he just wanted to rack up more followers by making people laugh. Some denied wrongdoing, others apologised. Most said they tweeted or posted without thinking.

The teen at the centre of the trial, who has been identified publicly only by her first name, Mila, told the court she feels as if she’s been “condemned to death".

"I do not see my future,” she said.

Mila, who describes herself as atheist, was 16 when she started posting videos on Instagram and later TikTok strongly criticising Islam and the Quran. Now 18, she testified that “I don’t like any religion, not just Islam.”

Her lawyer Richard Malka said Mila has received some 100,000 threatening messages, including death threats, rape threats, misogynist messages and hateful messages about her homosexuality.

Mila had to quit her secondary school, then another. She is now monitored daily by the police for her safety.
...
Mila’s online enemies don’t fit a single profile. Among the thousands of threats, authorities tracked down 13 suspects who are on trial this week. All are being identified publicly only by their first names, according to French practice.

https://www.france24.com/en/france/2021 ... c-of-islam

[Giz]

There is a de facto blasphemy law in many western countries.

(See the UK teacher currently in hiding for showing an image of Mohammed in class)

[Doctor X]

Just look at all of the "out" Atheists in Congress, or even on a school board.

– J.D.

[Witness]

↑ And I fear it will only get worse, under the cover of "hate speech". Obscurantism crawls back.

---

23 Messidor CCXXIX

France is investigating claims that Zara, Sketchers, and Uniqlo used forced Uyghur labor in China

• French prosecutors are investigating Zara, Sketchers, and Uniqlo, amid claims that the retailers used forced Uyghur labor.
• Legal complaints were filed in France by an exiled Uyghur worker and various human rights groups.
• The Chinese government has denied any claims of forced labor in Xinjiang.

https://www.businessinsider.com/france- ... ?r=US&IR=T

[Witness]

28 Messidor CCXXIX

France's anti-trust authority fines Google €500 million in news copyright row

France’s competition regulator on Tuesday slapped Google with a 500-million-euro ($593-million) fine for failing to negotiate “in good faith” with media companies over the use of their content under EU copyright rules.

It is “the biggest ever fine” imposed by the Competition Authority for a company’s failure to adhere to one of its rulings, the agency’s chief Isabelle De Silva told reporters.

In a ruling published on its website, the Competition Authority also ordered the US internet giant to present media publishers with “an offer of remuneration for the current use of their copyrighted content”, or risk paying additional damages of up to 900,000 euros a day.

A Google spokesperson said in a statement to AFP that the company was “very disappointed” by the decision.

“We have acted in good faith during the entire negotiation period. This fine does not reflect the efforts put in place, nor the reality of the use of news content on our platform,” the company insisted.

“This decision is mainly about negotiations that took place between May and September 2020. Since then, we have continued to work with publishers and news agencies to find common ground.”

The long-running legal battle has centred on claims that Google has been showing articles, pictures and videos produced by media groups when displaying search results without adequate compensation, despite the seismic shift of advertising revenue online.

https://www.france24.com/en/business/20 ... yright-row

[Witness]

12 Thermidor CCXXIX

France declares moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes two lab workers

Five public research institutions in France imposed a 3-month moratorium on the study of prions – a class of misfolded infectious proteins that cause fatal brain diseases – after a retired lab worker who manipulated prions in the past has been diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob prion disease (CJD), the most common prion disease in humans. An investigation is underway to find out whether the patient, who worked in a laboratory managed by the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (INRAE), contracted the disease at work.

If this were the case, it would be the second such case in France for a few years. In June 2019, an employee of the INRAE ​​laboratory named Émilie Jaumain died at the age of 33, 10 years after having pricked her thumb during an experiment with mice infected with prions. His family is now suing INRAE ​​for manslaughter and endangering life; his illness had already led to reinforced security measures in French prion laboratories.

The objective of the moratorium, which concerns nine laboratories, is “to study the possibility of a link with the [new patient’s] former professional activity and if necessary to adapt the preventive measures in force in research laboratories, ”according to a joint statement released yesterday by the five establishments.

https://www.fr24news.com/a/2021/07/fran ... rkers.html

[Giz]

“ Why France is losing one religious building every two weeks

Lamaze told CNA in an interview that in addition to one religious building disappearing every two weeks -- by demolition, transformation, destruction by fire, or collapse -- two-thirds of fires in religious buildings are due to arson.


https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cathol ... -two-weeks

[robinson]

Commies hate religion


Except for Islam


You can be sure it’s not Islamic buildings going up in flames

[robinson]

Why?

Because that would be on the evening news

[solely]

Insurance fraud.

[Witness]

Traditional religion is slowly fading out. (Good riddance, if you ask me.) So demolition & reuse for other purposes aren't astonishing as there is a cost. Dijon has an entire cathedral used as a theater. It started after 1789 in fact: multiple cathedrals and churches were sold, used as quarries, &c.

The arson is more intriguing and the insurance angle interesting! :mrgreen:

[shuize]

https://twitter.com/FaeceSocietatis/sta ... wsrc%5Etfw

[DJ]

Was that an insurrection?

[Fid]

Is there a guillotine museum? ~~~last selfie~~~Marie Antoinette lost her head on this one too...LOL...chunk.

[Ben Trovado]

Was that an insurrection?

I see no MAGA hats, so I am leaning "no."

I would be more positive, but I didn't see them trap people in the building and set fire to it - then it would be a hard "no."

[Doctor X]

Those were not "people," they were White Supremacists!

– J.D.

[Giz]

On the subject of the spate of church burnings:

“A Rwandan national suspected of causing a major fire that ravaged the cathedral in the French city of Nantes last year murdered a Catholic priest in western France on Monday, the interior minister and a source close to the investigation said.

The man, a Rwandan national named as Emmanuel A., has confessed to being behind the fire at the Gothic Nantes cathedral that horrified France on July 18, 2020.

Earlier on Monday, French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who accuses the government of being weak on immigration, sought to capitalise on the incident, saying that in France "you can be an illegal migrant, set fire to a cathedral, not be expelled and then reoffend by murdering a priest".

While firefighters were able to contain the Nantes blaze after just two hours and save the main structure, its famed organ, which dated from 1621 and had survived the French revolution and World War II bombardment, was destroyed.

Also lost were priceless artefacts and paintings, including a work by the 19th-century artist Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin and stained glass windows that contained remnants of 16th-century glass.“

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.france ... r-minister

[Ben Trovado]

Was that an insurrection?

Is it a coincidence that the DC insurrection only lasted 4 hours?



. . . or should they call a doctor?

[DJ]

:wink:

:lol:

[Giz]

Interesting, I didn’t realize that to stand for president in France you need to be endorsed by 500 elected officials. This seems to have been the case for a while, with the twist that now the endorsement has to be public… (from the spectator.co.uk):

“sponsorships from elected officials collected by each presidential candidate are unambiguous though. The latest totals were released on Tuesday, and Anne Hidalgo, the Socialist nominee, and Valérie Pécresse, of the centre-right LR, have both accumulated more than 500, the figure required to stand as a candidate. Macron was the first to reach 500 and he now has 926 sponsors.

It's not looking so rosy for Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour, both of whom are struggling to persuade mayors and other elected officials to give them their backing. The leader of the National Rally has mustered only 139 sponsors, ten fewer than Zemmour. In contrast, the communist candidate, Fabien Roussel, has 326 names on his list, and even the far-left fringe candidate Philippe Poutou, who wants to disarm the police, has 127. ‘I’m worried,’ admitted Le Pen. ‘It's more and more difficult. A lot more difficult than in 2017. We're confronted with a veritable strike of mayors.’

There’s no doubt that a rule change in 2016, passed by François Hollande, which made it mandatory to publicise the name of your sponsors has proved inhibitive. There have been allegations that town and village mayors are being ‘blackmailed’ into withholding support for Le Pen and Zemmour by their regional and departmental authorities. Vote for them, mayors are told, and you may find funding for future projects harder to come by.

Whatever the reason for the reluctance of elected officials to support the right-wing candidates it does not reflect well on the democratic process in France. Between them Le Pen and Zemmour have the support of around 30 per cent of the population, compared to 1.5 per cent for Hidalgo and 3.6 per cent for the Communist candidate. “

[Doctor X]

Yes, voting for an actual racist party can be politically untenable, even in Japan France.

– J.D.

[Giz]

Yes, voting for an actual racist party can be politically untenable, even in Japan France.

– J.D.

I think that this has similarities to the grooming gangs in rochdale, where the only political party to pay attention was the (detestable) bnp. The answer shouldn’t be ‘vote racist’, it should be ‘mainstream parties shouldn’t ignore widely held concerns, abandoning the issue to fringe parties’.

What the mainstream parties seem to be doing is just trying to sweep certain discussions under the carpet (whether EU integration or grooming gangs or whatever). It would be different if they would put a case for (or against) but instead it is a non-conversation… leaving voters without mainstream engagement.