Emmanuel Macron very quickly made it official : He will introduce a bill which will transform extraordinary state of emergency powers into regular police practice.
According to Le Monde, which saw a leaked copy of the bill: "...almost all the measures of the state of emergency will be found in common law.”
What this means is that the post-Charlie Hebdo war hysteria has not only never stopped, but will have become the new, permanent normal: Anyone can be arrested, searched and detained with just a simple accusation. Judges simply need to be "informed”; police have carte blanche.
So...when can I start referring to France as an "authoritarian state” without getting edited?
LOL, I don't know what it would actually require to finally start calling that spade a "spade”.... I am reminded that Confucius' " rectification of names ” doctrine shows that the failure to call things by their proper names can only lead to social disorder.
I hate to say I told you so, but after less than one month in power Macron has proven to be what many feared: All the fascism of Marine Le Pen, slightly less (perhaps) of the xenophobia, 100 times the austerity. What a lousy formula that is!
And despite all the warning signs, Macron won pretty handily. And again, despite all the warning signs, Macron's party is set to win an absolute majority in Parliament when the final round votes are tallied on June 18.
The bill transforming civil liberties in France will be immediately introduced three days later, on June 21. Macron is not wasting any time in showing his true colors, and the bill was obviously whistle-blown in order to warn voters.
I understand if the average person isn't paying attention, but for journalists - it's our job to do so.
Some journalists are wasting space by acting completely surprised at the legalization of what is properly termed a "police state dictatorship”, but Macron showed his authoritarian inclination by repeatedly promising to extend the state of emergency upon entering office and he said so again this week (until November 1).
Instead of focusing on the campaign - when he spoke to voters directly - many journalists are foolishly claiming to have been misled by a comment in his book that the state of emergency could not be "permanent”.
Well, of course....absolutely nobody, anywhere is saying that France needs to be living under a permanent state of emergency until the end of time.
But France is currently a country so badly burned by Hollande's 180-degree about-face on election promises that they are perhaps hyper-sensitive to yet another faithless elected. But they are being willfully blind, again, and they would do better to examine the fact that his proposed changes to the labor code this week are even more right-wing than what he warned of while campaigning.
I remind readers that a " French Patriot Act ”, which gave cops all the powers they allegedly needed to fight terrorism, was rushed through in the 2015 post-Charlie Hebdo war hysteria. France's executive branch was already perhaps the most powerful in the West, so at the time many said it wasn't even necessary.
But they grabbed more power, anyway, because that seems to be the only true talent of Western politicians in the 21 st century.