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French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

(www.bbc.com)
375 points begueradj | 2 comments | 22 Oct 25 05:49 UTC | HN request time: 0.41s | source
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boltzmann-brain ◴[22 Oct 25 07:01 UTC] No.45665733[source]▶
oh I wish the American people were this brave
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falcor84 ◴[22 Oct 25 08:25 UTC] No.45666249[source]▶
Reading up about Israeli politics, it seems that this might be a "be careful what you wish for" situation. They had previously put in prison both a prime minister and a president, and the disastrous governance there over the last decade and a half appears to be in large motivated by Netanyahu's almost certain knowledge that he'll go to prison if and when he loses his grip on the reins.

The documentary The Bibi Files was a particularly interesting examination of the allegations against him and his almost shrugging response to them [0]. And going back to America, a week ago Trump asked the Israeli president to preemptively pardon Netanyahu during his speech at their parliament [1], which I find to be concerning on all possible levels.

[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33338697/

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/trump-urges-israel...

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1. yard2010 ◴[22 Oct 25 08:55 UTC] No.45666436[source]▶
I'm not into politics and I'm far from an expert but this has more to it. Netanyahu doesn't just wait until he loses his grip on the rein, he's making the changes to the system (i.e ruin the whole country for everyone) so he won't count as a criminal when this is all over.

No offense but the french people should thank god their criminal in control didn't go all the way through turning the country into a shit show in the process.

As I said before I believe we live in a global time in which countries must embrace the rule of law systematically in order to survive as democracies. Otherwise you just get a kleptocracy with extra steps, just like in the US, some of Europe and Russia.

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2. falcor84 ◴[22 Oct 25 09:21 UTC] No.45666625[source]▶
Yes, exactly - I was hoping to allude to that, but apparently wasn't clear in my writing. It seems to me that he has arrived at a "L'État, c'est moi" mentality, doing everything in his power (and consolidating as much additional power as possible) to stay out of prison, even (as you said) at the cost of destroying the country around him and the rest of the middle east, intentionally aggravating all the conflicts in the area, to be able to continuously yell out about crises that (in the mind of those who support him) necessitate his staying in power.