Henry Ford: “You can have any color you want so long as it is black.”
The EU: “You can have any candidates you want so long as they are open-borders, globalist war mongers.”
Meanwhile in Germany, the outgoing coalition of losers has voted to amend the German constitution to allow massive budget deficits to support the largest rearmament program since the 1930s.
Will Europe will end up as another German Democratic Republic (East Germany) where only parties in a coalition ruled by the Communist Party were allowed on the ballot?
Or is it heading towards a Fourth Reich ruled by war mongers?
Two separate issues.
Yes, banning opposition parties is a real threat to democracy.
Yes, with a newly aggressive Russia, Germany needs to be better able to defend itself…so we don’t have to do all the spending defending Europe.
The justification for the war with Russia has been “saving democracy”, but the biggest threat to European democracy is coming from Brussels. The top priority is saving the globalist elite that runs Europe from the threat of removal by voters.
The EU needs to keep the war going in Ukraine as long as possible in to provide a pretext for more censorship, more bans on opposition leaders, and more canceled elections. Ukrainians are needlessly dying in an unwinnable war as the result.
“Le Pen, 56, will appeal, her lawyer said, and neither the prison sentence nor the fine will be applied until her appeals are exhausted. But the five-year ban from running for office starts immediately, via a so-called “provisional execution” measure requested by prosecutors.”
No prison sentence.
No penalty on her personally until all appeals have been exhausted.
The only ruling that goes into effect immediately is not a penalty against her but a penalty against the voting public that they cannot vote for her.
One judge deciding for tens of millions of voters.
It’s pretty clear what the purpose of this case was.
Good points. I suspect that Pen is not the only politician in France with similar accounting irregularities, but she is the only one banned from office.
In the age of universal surveillance and incredibly complex legal codes, selective prosecution means that practically anyone can be convicted of some sort of crime.
“Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime”. --Lavrentiy Beria
Harvard University professor Harvey Silverglate estimates that daily life in the United States is so over-criminalized, the average American professional commits about three felonies a day. Three Felonies a Day - Institute for Policy Studies
Ya and this is why this could backfire. If the right actually runs a candidate without the ‘LePen’ name their likelihood of winning I would imagine increases as past elections has shown they are a significant percentage of the population in France that will not for someone with the name LePen.
I suspect that if they uniformly applied similar standards, they could throw most of the French government into prison. Le Pen is hardly the only French politician with some accounting irregularities.
Le Pen’s real crime is obviously threatening to win the next presidential election. The same is true of the prosecutions against Trump once it became clear that he was going to run again in 2024.
They weren’t accounting irregularities. They were embezzlements. It’s ok though. I am sure if they start prosecuting leftwing politicians who don’t support Putin you will gladly defend them
.