http://arstechnica.com/…

Having just passed its super-controversial Création et Internet “graduated response” law, you might think the French government would take at least a brief break from riling up the “internautes.” Instead, the government is prepping a new crime bill that will, among other things, mandate Internet censorship at the ISP level, legalize government spyware, and create a massive meta-database of citizen information called “Pericles.”

French newspaper Le Monde has the details on the new law, dubbed “Loppsi 2.” Together with the recent Dadvsi law (which banned DRM circumvention) and Création et Internet (which disconnects repeat online copyright infringers), Loppsi 2 will “fix” France’s various cybersecurity issues.

Think of the children

Loppsi 2 allows the state to install software that can “observe, collect, record, save, and transmit” keystrokes from computers on which it is installed. In essence, it allows for government-installed Trojans for a period of four months; a judge can extend this period for four months more.

In the US, the FBI has used similar techniques for several years, installing a program called CIPAV on suspects’ computers to record and transmit “pen register” data back to investigators.

Under Loppsi 2, French ISPs would also need to participate in a Web censorship regime that initially appears targeted at child pornography. Critics like Jean-Michel Planche, who advises the French government on Internet issues, are already calling the new bill the end of an open and neutral Internet.

Finally, the bill allows for a database called “Pericles” that can pull together information from various existing French databases to create a “super-dossier” on people. According to Le Monde, such a database could contain all sorts of crucial, personal information, and sounds certain to set off the same debates that have taken place in the US whenever similar projects have been floated.

Oh—and did we mention that Loppsi 2 funds all sorts of other crime-fighting techniques, including automated camera systems that record the license plates of cars passing by on the motorway?

Taken together, the Loppsi 2 draft shows just how serious the Sarkozy government is about getting some control over this crazy Internet thing that all the kids are using now. Actually, this is a situation playing out in most developed countries at the moment, and it’s not yet clear whether a global consensus will emerge on how to deal with law enforcement challenges on the ‘Net.

Numerous countries in Europe already run Internet child porn blacklists; massive government databases exist or are being developed just about everywhere; graduated response laws are slowly moving into the mainstream. France just seems more interested than most in adopting all of these ideas in the shortest possible timeframe.

http://news.yahoo.com/…

The head of Europe’s biggest economy said Thursday that world leaders should be looking at the massive U.S. deficit and other economic imbalances, not just problems caused by financial markets, as they debate a new global order.

Speaking at a conference in Paris on the future of capitalism, German Chancellor Angela Merkel singled out the American budget deficit and China’s current account surplus – the difference between exports and imports – as problems upsetting the global economy.

“We would be making an error if we were content to look solely at financial markets,” she said.

She deplored huge debts that governments are accumulating to spend their way out of the present crisis. But she said she recognized, for the moment, that “there is no other possibility.”

A Congressional Budget Office report estimates that the U.S. federal budget deficit will hit an unparalleled $1.2 trillion for the 2009 budget year – and that is before President-elect Barack Obama’s sweeping stimulus package is calculated. European governments have agreed to be flexible about budget rules that limit deficits to 3 percent of gross domestic product as recession bites.

Merkel said the International Monetary Fund has not managed to regulate global capitalism, and she called for the creation of an economy body at the United Nations, similar to the Security Council, to judge government policy.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, leading the two-day conference with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, blamed financial speculators for encouraging a system fueled on debt. He called financial capitalism based on speculation “an immoral system” that has “perverted the logic of capitalism.”

“It’s a system where wealth goes to the wealthy, where work is devalued, where production is devalued, where entrepreneurial spirit is devalued,” he said.

But no more: “In capitalism of the 21st century, there is room for the state,” he said.

Governments around the world have had to step in to rescue credit-starved banks and financial institutions from collapse. They are also pumping billions of euros into their economies to encourage growth.

Measures will be taken by global leaders meeting in London on April 2, Sarkozy promised, urging the U.S. to join the international consensus.

Blair called for a new financial order based on “values other than the maximum short-term profit.”

“The greatest entrepreneur I had the chance to meet was passionate about what he had created, not what he had accumulated,” he said.

Anyone with a history book and a cursory understanding of economics knows the State is what caused all this in the first place. What we have is in no way capitalism. In capitalism the maximum role of government is protection of private property. Every “capitalist” government in existence is in fact fascist / neomercantilist / corporatist. This whole game of theirs isn’t about equality or fairness. Whatever the hell that really means or would look like. It’s about centralization. It’s about control.

http://www.cnn.com/…

A French woman severely disfigured by facial tumors has been been found dead just two days after a court rejected her request for an assisted suicide.

Medical examiners were Thursday looking into the death of 52-year-old Chantal Sebire — whose case had prompted nominally Roman Catholic France to reexamine its stance on euthanasia — to determine whether anything illegal had taken place.

It was not immediately clear how Sebire died.

Sebire had suffered from esthesioneuroblastoma, a rare and incurable form of cancer for eight years, developing tumors in her nasal passages and sinuses that distorted her face and caused her nose and eyes to bulge.

The woman from Dijon, in eastern France, said drugs were ineffective against the excruciating pain caused by the condition and there was no reason doctors should not be permitted to hasten her death.

Assisted suicide is illegal in France, however. The law permits only passive euthanasia — removing feeding and hydration tubes when a person is in a coma, or inducing a coma and then removing the tubes.

Sebire’s lawyer had tried to convince a French court that it was “barbaric” to put her through the ordeal of dying slowly in an artificial coma, something that could take up to two weeks while her three children looked on in anguish.

The court turned down the appeal Monday.

At the same time, Sebire wrote a letter to French President Nicolas Sarkozy appealing for help, but he responded by suggesting top doctors should reexamine her for a second opinion.

This is really really sick. The courts decision was bad but Sarkozy’s was worse. As if this woman hadn’t gotten every single opinion reasonable. People treat their pets more humanely. I’m glad this woman spent the time to fight for death rights instead of just going and killing herself when she originally wanted to do so. In fact her suicide just two days after being denied the right to do so kept the situation fresh and I think expanded the effectiveness of what she tried to accomplish.

http://www.theweekmagazine.com/…

In any given week, any more than 35 to 38 hours of work is wasted at best, damaging at worst.

What the? Perhaps with Nicolas Sarkozy wanting to extend the length of the work week in France the Germans are looking to role back theirs to compensate? Whatever… if they want to force people to 35-38 hour work weeks that’s fine by me. Less competition.

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